| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: the Grand Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Weimar appointed an audience to
Baron and Baroness Brunnow at seven, and they had not returned at
half-past seven, when the Grand Duke and their other guests arrived.
The Baroness immediately advanced to the Grand Duke and sunk on her
knees before him, asking pardon in Russian. He begged her to rise,
but she remained in the attitude of deep humiliation, until the
Grand Duke sunk also on HIS knees and gently raised her, and then
kissed her on the cheek, a privilege, you know, of royalty.
. . . On Monday evening we both went to a concert at Mr. Hudson's,
the great railway "king," who has just made an immense fortune from
railway stocks, and is now desirous to get into society. These
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: And Tomlinson took up his tale and spoke of his good in life.
"This I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me,
And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy."
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path,
And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath.
"Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said,
"and the tale is yet to run:
By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer -- what ha' ye done?"
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore,
For the Darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before: --
"O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say,
Verses 1889-1896 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: dandy would have had no fault to find but that the taste of all this
luxury was commonplace. Art, and the distinction that comes of the
choice of things that taste assimilates, was entirely wanting. A
doctor of social science would have detected a lover in two or three
specimens of costly trumpery, which could only have come there through
that demi-god--always absent, but always present if the lady is
married.
The dinner, four hours behind time, to which the husband, wife, and
child sat down, betrayed the financial straits in which the household
found itself, for the table is the surest thermometer for gauging the
income of a Parisian family. Vegetable soup made with the water
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