| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: realisation that rumour and scandal are afoot about one. Abruptly
one's confidence in the solidity of the universe disappears. One
walks silenced through a world that one feels to be full of
inaudible accusations. One cannot challenge the assault, get it out
into the open, separate truth and falsehood. It slinks from you,
turns aside its face. Old acquaintances suddenly evaded me, made
extraordinary excuses; men who had presumed on the verge of my world
and pestered me with an intrusive enterprise, now took the bold step
of flat repudiation. I became doubtful about the return of a nod,
retracted all those tentacles of easy civility that I had hitherto
spread to the world. I still grow warm with amazed indignation when
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: Cardot's face; for he trained his son-in-law, no doubt. Would you
believe it, little and old as he is, M. Cardot only gives Florine five
hundred francs a month, just about enough to pay for her rent and her
grub and her clothes. The old Marquis de Rochegude offered me a
brougham two months ago, and he has six hundred thousand francs a
year, but I am an artist and not a common hussy."
"You shall have a carriage the day after to-morrow, miss," said
Camusot benignly; "you never asked me for one."
"As if one ASKED for such a thing as that? What! you love a woman and
let her paddle about in the mud at the risk of breaking her legs?
Nobody but a knight of the yardstick likes to see a draggled skirt
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: auspices of the British Association Committee on Electrical
Standards, is due to experimental work by Jenkin, described in a
paper, 'Experiments on Capacity,' constituting No. IV. of the
appendix to the Report presented by the Committee to the Dundee
Meeting of 1867. No other determination, so far as I know, of this
important element of electric measurement has hitherto been made;
and it is no small thing to be proud of in respect to Jenkin's fame
as a scientific and practical electrician that the microfarad which
we now all use is his.
The British Association unit of electrical resistance, on which was
founded the first practical approximation to absolute measurement
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