| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: Across one end and down both sides of the room extended a row
of tables, and at these tables some fifty or seventy-five
students [1. See Appendix C] were sitting.
Some of them were sipping wine, others were playing cards,
others chess, other groups were chatting together,
and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for
the coming duels. Nearly all of them wore colored caps;
there were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps,
and bright-yellow ones; so, all the five corps were
present in strong force. In the windows at the vacant
end of the room stood six or eight, narrow-bladed swords
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: We landed at a floating lavatory, where the washer-women were still
beating the clothes.
AT COMPIEGNE
WE put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where nobody
observed our presence.
Reservery and general MILITARISMUS (as the Germans call it) were
rampant. A camp of conical white tents without the town looked
like a leaf out of a picture Bible; sword-belts decorated the walls
of the CAFES; and the streets kept sounding all day long with
military music. It was not possible to be an Englishman and avoid
a feeling of elation; for the men who followed the drums were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: "Wife," he said, when the clerks had gone down, "this is certainly one
of the most important days in our life! The nuts are bought, the
hydraulic press is ready to go to work, the land affair is settled.
Here, lock up that cheque on the Bank of France, he added, handing her
Pillerault's paper. "The improvements in the house are ordered, the
dignity of our appartement is about to be increased. Bless me! I saw,
down in the Cour Batave, a very singular man,"--and he told the tale
of Monsieur Molineux.
"I see," said his wife, interrupting him in the middle of a tirade,
"that you have gone in debt two hundred thousand francs."
"That is true, wife," said Cesar, with mock humility, "Good God, how
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
