| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: inland, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from
it through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea:
these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they
brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the
fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal
into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits
of the earth--in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in
summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the
canals.
As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a leader
for the men who were fit for military service, and the size of a lot was a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: them.
Just heaven! What masticators!--/What bread!--
and so as he finished the last mouthful of it, we entered the town of
Montreuil.
Chapter 3.XCII.
There is not a town in all France which, in my opinion, looks better in the
map, than Montreuil;--I own, it does not look so well in the book of post-
roads; but when you come to see it--to be sure it looks most pitifully.
There is one thing, however, in it at present very handsome; and that is,
the inn-keeper's daughter: She has been eighteen months at Amiens, and six
at Paris, in going through her classes; so knits, and sews, and dances, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: event by the various species which compose the genus Parisian,--
"Parisian" is here used merely to generalize our remark.
Therefore, if you should say to an individual of the species
Practical, "Do you know Madame Firmiani?" he would present that lady
to your mind by the following inventory: "Fine house in the rue du
Bac, salons handsomely furnished, good pictures, one hundred thousand
francs a year, husband formerly receiver-general of the department of
Montenotte." So saying, the Practical man, rotund and fat and usually
dressed in black, will project his lower lip and wrap it over the
upper, nodding his head as if to add: "Solid people, those; nothing to
be said against them." Ask no further; Practical men settle
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