| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: with brandy for the madness of revolution, with wits enough, in fine,
to take fire at a captious word, which signifies to it always: Gold
and Pleasure! If we comprise in it all those who hold out their hands
for an alms, for lawful wages, or the five francs that are granted to
every kind of Parisian prostitution, in short, for all the money well
or ill earned, this people numbers three hundred thousand individuals.
Were it not for the /cabarets/, would not the Government be overturned
every Tuesday? Happily, by Tuesday, this people is glutted, sleeps off
its pleasure, is penniless, and returns to its labor, to dry bread,
stimulated by a need of material procreation, which has become a habit
to it. None the less, this people has its phenomenal virtues, its
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: that a huge bear had been seen in the forest stretching towards
Juriewetz. The sorrowing Prince pricked up his ears, threw down
his whip, and ordered a chase. Sasha, the broad-shouldered, the
cunning, the ready, the untiring companion of his master, secretly
ordered a cask of vodki to follow the crowd of hunters and
serfs. There was a steel-bright sky, a low, yellow sun, and a
brisk easterly wind from the heights of the Ural. As the crisp
snow began to crunch under the Prince's sled, his followers saw the
old expression come back to his face. With song and halloo and
blast of horns, they swept away into the forest.
Saint John the Hunter must have been on guard over Russia that day.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: have wrought so great a change in the young man. The rugged
exposure in camp and field during the hard winter that had passed
had roughened the smooth bloom of his boyish complexion and
bronzed his fair skin almost as much as a midsummer's sun could
have done. His beard and mustache had grown again, (now heavier
and more mannish from having been shaved), and the white seam of
a scar over the right temple gave, if not a stern, at least a
determined look to the strong, square-jawed young face. So the
two stood for a while regarding one another. Myles was the first
to break the silence.
"My Lord," said he, "thou didst send for me to come back to
Men of Iron |
