| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: successor of Monsieur le Baron de la Billardiere, Monsieur
Baudoyer, one of the worthiest citizens of a populous quarter,
where his benevolence is scarcely less known than the piety on
which the ministerial organ laid so much stress. Why was that
sheet silent as to his talents? Did it reflect that in boasting of
the bourgeoise nobility of Monsieur Baudoyer--which, certainly, is
a nobility as good as any other--it was pointing out a reason for
the exclusion of the candidate? A gratuitous piece of perfidy! an
attempt to kill with a caress! To appoint Monsieur Baudoyer is to
do honor to the virtues, the talents of the middle classes, of
whom we shall ever be the supporters, though their cause seems at
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript."
Aunt Helen
Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
And silence at her end of the street.
The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet--
He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: south, a strong current runs at certain periods of the flood and
ebb respectively; but in this northern bay - Aros Bay, as it is
called - where the house stands and on which my uncle was now
gazing, the only sign of disturbance is towards the end of the ebb,
and even then it is too slight to be remarkable. When there is any
swell, nothing can be seen at all; but when it is calm, as it often
is, there appear certain strange, undecipherable marks - sea-runes,
as we may name them - on the glassy surface of the bay. The like
is common in a thousand places on the coast; and many a boy must
have amused himself as I did, seeking to read in them some
reference to himself or those he loved. It was to these marks that
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