| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: accidental causes of great weight might be pointed out, and I may
mention before all the rest the extreme lassitude which the wars
of the Revolution and the Empire have left behind them.]
[Footnote b: This is not only because these nations have the same
social condition, but it arises from the very nature of that
social condition which leads men to imitate and identify
themselves with each other. When the members of a community are
divided into castes and classes, they not only differ from one
another, but they have no taste and no desire to be alike; on the
contrary, everyone endeavors, more and more, to keep his own
opinions undisturbed, to retain his own peculiar habits, and to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: fifty years, has shone on Champagne, and to which we owe the vast
number of distinguished and accomplished women who adorn this
beautiful region of our country."
If you know, as I do, madame, what a forlorn, beggarly region
Champagne is, you would say, or something like it, that Sallenauve is
a rascally fellow, and that the passion to enter the legislature makes
a man capable of shocking deceit. Was it worth while, in fact, for a
man who usually respects himself to boldly tell a lie of criminal
dimensions, when a moment later a little unforeseen circumstance
occurred which did more than all the speeches ever uttered to commend
him to the sympathy of the electors?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: Of the Eleusinian mother, threshing-sleighs
And drags, and harrows with their crushing weight;
Then the cheap wicker-ware of Celeus old,
Hurdles of arbute, and thy mystic fan,
Iacchus; which, full tale, long ere the time
Thou must with heed lay by, if thee await
Not all unearned the country's crown divine.
While yet within the woods, the elm is tamed
And bowed with mighty force to form the stock,
And take the plough's curved shape, then nigh the root
A pole eight feet projecting, earth-boards twain,
Georgics |
