| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cratylus by Plato: a whole language. For like the other gifts which nature has bestowed upon
man, that of speech has been conveyed to him through the medium, not of the
many, but of the few, who were his 'law-givers'--'the legislator with the
dialectician standing on his right hand,' in Plato's striking image, who
formed the manners of men and gave them customs, whose voice and look and
behaviour, whose gesticulations and other peculiarities were instinctively
imitated by them,--the 'king of men' who was their priest, almost their
God...But these are conjectures only: so little do we know of the origin
of language that the real scholar is indisposed to touch the subject at
all.
(2) There are other errors besides the figment of a primitive or original
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of the Golden Bullet by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: tell me - of course, only what a faithful servant could tell. It
will interest my customers very much."
"You know all there is to know," said the valet, evidently
disappointed that he had nothing to tell which could win the
peddler's gratitude. "There are no secrets about it. Everybody
knows that they were a very happy couple, and even if there was a
little talk between them on that day, why it was pure accident and
had nothing to do with the mistress' excitement."
"Then there was a quarrel between them?"
"Are people talking about it?"
"I've heard some things said. They even say that this quarrel
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: assistant found the unfortunate debtor up six pairs of stairs at the
back of a yard at the further end of the Faubourg du Roule. The room
was unfurnished save for a bed (such a bed!), a table, and such a
table! La Palferine heard the preposterous demand--'A demand which I
should qualify as illegal,' he said when he told us the story, 'made,
as it was, at seven o'clock in the morning.'
" 'Go,' he answered, with the gesture and attitude of a Mirabeau,
'tell your master in what condition you find me.'
"The assistant apologized and withdrew. La Palferine, seeing the young
man on the landing, rose in the attire celebrated in verse in
/Britannicus/ to add, 'Remark the stairs! Pay particular attention to
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