| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: their chosen topic; its exploits were their own patent of nobility;
and where a man or a race has had but one adventure, and that
heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of reference.
They told me the country was still full of legends hitherto
uncollected; I heard from them about Cavalier's descendants - not
direct descendants, be it understood, but only cousins or nephews -
who were still prosperous people in the scene of the boy-general's
exploits; and one farmer had seen the bones of old combatants dug
up into the air of an afternoon in the nineteenth century, in a
field where the ancestors had fought, and the great-grandchildren
were peaceably ditching.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: M. d'Espard as a man to whom a crown should be awarded, rather than
that he should be threatened with a Commission in Lunacy.
"In the course of a long professional career, I have seen and heard
nothing that has touched me more deeply than that I have just seen and
heard. But it is not extraordinary that virtue should wear its noblest
aspect when it is practised by men of the highest class.
"Having heard me express myself in this way, I hope, Monsieur le
Marquis, that you feel certain of my silence, and that you will not
for a moment be uneasy as to the decision pronounced in the case--if
it comes before the Court."
"There, now! Well said," cried Madame Jeanrenaud. "That is something
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: believe, Mr. Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your
sinking-fund?"
"Twelve hundred hands?" said the stranger, the young man who
had first spoken. "Do you control their votes, Kirby?"
"Control? No." The young man smiled complacently. "But my
father brought seven hundred votes to the polls for his
candidate last November. No force-work, you understand,--only
a speech or two, a hint to form themselves into a society, and
a bit of red and blue bunting to make them a flag. The
Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name. I forget the
motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think."
Life in the Iron-Mills |
