| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: the Wortschin mines, which he himself issued at twenty per cent more
than he gave for them! Yes, gentlemen!--He took a hundred and fifty
thousand bottles of champagne of Grandet to cover himself (forseeing
the failure of the virtuous parent of the present Comte d'Aubrion),
and as much Bordeaux wine of Duberghe at the same time. Those three
hundred thousand bottles which he took over (and took at thirty sous
apiece, my dear boy) he supplied at the price of six francs per bottle
to the Allies in the Palais Royal during the foreign occupation,
between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen's name and his paper acquired a
European celebrity. The illustrious Baron, so far from being engulfed
like others, rose the higher for calamities. Twice his arrangements
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: He don't allow them to have but two hacks now, and sometimes only one.'
'Well,' said I, 'if you are so light-hearted and jolly in ordinary times,
what must you be in an epidemic?'
He shook his head.
'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an epidemic.
An epidemic don't pay. Well, of course I don't mean that, exactly;
but it don't pay in proportion to the regular thing.
Don't it occur to you, why?'
No.
'Think.'
'I can't imagine. What is it?'
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: Higgs their frowsy-headed little girl, the least promising and
(as the event showed) the most useful of the lot. The talk ran
endlessly on the great house and the great family; the roast
beef, the Yorkshire pudding, the jam-roll, and the cheddar
cheese came and went, and still the stream flowed on; near four
generations of Carthews were touched upon without eliciting
one point of interest; and we had killed Mr. Henry in "the
'unting-field," with a vast elaboration of painful circumstance,
and buried him in the midst of a whole sorrowing county,
before I could so much as manage to bring upon the stage my
intimate friend, Mr. Norris. At the name, the ex-butler grew
|
