| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: talked the man over and drawn their conclusions. Gothard and Catherine
had set the breakfast-table near the fire and the abbe and his sister
were sharing the meal. Neither masters nor servants paid the slightest
attention to the two spies, who walked up and down the garden, the
courtyard or the lawn, returning every now and then to the salon.
At half-past two the lieutenant reappeared.
"I found the corporal," he said to Corentin, "lying in the road which
leads from the pavilion of Cinq-Cygne to the farm at Bellache. He has
no wound, only a bad contusion of the head, caused, apparently, by his
fall. He told me he had been lifted suddenly off his horse and flung
so violently to the ground that he could not discover how the thing
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: [3] Lit. "those good things which the gods afford in their seasons."
[4] Or, "arise," or "are fashioned."
Indeed it would be scarcely irrational to maintain that the city of
Athens lies at the navel, not of Hellas merely, but of the habitable
world. So true is it, that the farther we remove from Athens the
greater the extreme of heat or cold to be encountered; or to use
another illustration, the traveller who desires to traverse the
confines of Hellas from end to end will find that, whether he voyages
by sea or by land, he is describing a circle, the centre of which is
Athens.[5]
[5] See "Geog. of Brit. Isles." J. R. and S. A. Green, ch. i. p. 7:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: could Frederica's artless affection detach him from her mother, we might
bless the day which brought her to Churchhill. I think, my dear mother, you
would not disapprove of her as a daughter. She is extremely young, to be
sure, has had a wretched education, and a dreadful example of levity in her
mother; but yet I can pronounce her disposition to be excellent, and her
natural abilities very good. Though totally without accomplishments, she is
by no means so ignorant as one might expect to find her, being fond of
books and spending the chief of her time in reading. Her mother leaves her
more to herself than she did, and I have her with me as much as possible,
and have taken great pains to overcome her timidity. We are very good
friends, and though she never opens her lips before her mother, she talks
Lady Susan |
