| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Economist by Xenophon: doctrine of Anamensis here apparently referred to.
Soc. The first thing I should like to learn, Ischomachus, I think, if
only as a point befitting a philosopher, is this: how to proceed and
how to work the soil, did I desire to extract the largest crops of
wheat and barley.
Isch. Good, then! you are aware that fallow must be broken up in
readiness[11] for sowing?
[11] Or, "ploughed up." Cf. Theophr. "Hist. Pl." iii. i. 6; Dion. Hal.
"Ant." x. 17.
Soc. Yes, I am aware of that.
Isch. Well then, supposing we begin to plough our land in winter?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: Through a drapery of filmy blue gauze that veiled her head and throat,
her arched eyebrows, tiny ears, and ivory-white skin could be
distinguished. A scarf of shot-silk fell from her shoulders, and was
caught up at the waist by a girdle of fretted silver. Her full
trousers, of black silk, were embroidered in a pattern of silver
mandragoras, and as she moved forward with indolent grace, her little
feet were seen to be shod with slippers made of the feathers of
humming-birds.
When she arrived in front of the pavilion she removed her veil.
Behold! she seemed to be Herodias herself, as she had appeared in the
days of her blooming youth.
Herodias |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: never read Stendhal's /De l'Amour/, but unconsciously they put it in
practice. They have by heart their chapters--Love-Taste, Love-Passion,
Love-Caprice, Love-Crystalized, and more than all, Love-Transient. All
is good in their eyes. They invented the burlesque axiom, 'In the
sight of man, all women are equal.' The actual text is more vigorously
worded, but as in my opinion the spirit is false, I do not stand nice
upon the letter.
"My friend, madame, is named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor Benjamin George
Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli, Comte de la Palferine. The
Rusticolis came to France with Catherine de Medici, having been ousted
about that time from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are
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