| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: Bolshevik, working in a Government office, who suffered
last summer from a slight derangement of the stomach due
to improper and inadequate feeding. His doctor
prescribed a medicine, and nearly a dozen different
apothecaries were unable to make up the prescription for
lack of one or several of the simple ingredients required.
Soap has become an article so rare (in Russia as in Germany
during the blockade and the war there is a terrible absence of
fats) that for the present it is to be treated as a means of
safeguarding labor, to be given to the workmen for washing
after and during their work, and in preference to miners,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: figure in the Elective Chamber in presence of the peerage and the
court; and had none too much credit personally. Admiral Kergarouet
existed only as the husband of his wife. Savinien admitted to himself
that he had seen orators, men from the middle classes, or lesser
noblemen, become influential personages. Money was the pivot, the sole
means, the only mechanism of a society which Louis XVIII. had tried to
create in the likeness of that of England.
On his way from the Rue de la Clef to the Rue Croix des Petits-Champs
the young gentleman divulged the upshot of these meditations (which
were certainly in keeping with de Marsay's advice) to the old doctor.
"I ought," he said, "to go into oblivion for three or four years and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: into this enclosure, we think that at a time, difficult now to
determine, this spot of earth must have been the joy of some country
gentleman devoted to roses and tulips, in a word, to horticulture, but
above all a lover of choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the
wreck of an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely
destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the
negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be divined as
we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when we read the epitaph
on his tomb. To complete the mournful and tender impressions which
seize the soul, on one of the walls there is a sundial graced with
this homely Christian motto, '/Ultimam cogita/.'
La Grande Breteche |
