| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: The Epeira, therefore, does not incontinently kill her prey with
her delicate bite; she poisons it so as to produce a gradual
weakness, which gives the blood-sucker ample time to drain her
victim, without the least risk, before the rigor mortis stops the
flow of moisture.
The meal lasts quite twenty-four hours, if the joint be large; and
to the very end the butchered insect retains a remnant of life, a
favourable condition for the exhausting of the juices. Once again,
we see a skilful method of slaughter, very different from the
tactics in use among the expert paralyzers or slayers. Here there
is no display of anatomical science. Unacquainted with the
The Life of the Spider |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: country then assumes a dim and dubious shape in the eyes of the
citizens; they no longer behold it in the soil which they
inhabit, for that soil is to them a dull inanimate clod; nor in
the usages of their forefathers, which they have been taught to
look upon as a debasing yoke; nor in religion, for of that they
doubt; nor in the laws, which do not originate in their own
authority; nor in the legislator, whom they fear and despise.
The country is lost to their senses, they can neither discover it
under its own nor under borrowed features, and they entrench
themselves within the dull precincts of a narrow egotism. They
are emancipated from prejudice without having acknowledged the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: you are putting into it ideas which people will understand--WHEN they
are generalized! In fifty years from now you'll be to all the world
what you are to a few of us at this moment,--a great man. The only
question is how to get along till then."
"I have just finished," resumed the great artist, his face expanding
like that of a man whose hobby is stroked, "an allegorical figure of
Harmony; and if you will come and see it, you will understand why it
should have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is in it! At
the first glance one divines the destiny of the globe. A queen holds a
shepherd's crook in her hand,--symbolical of the advancement of the
races useful to mankind; she wears on her head the cap of Liberty; her
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