| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: nature of my report will protect you in future from all suspicions. I
will speak of your patriotic gifts, your civic virtues, and that will
save you."
Madame de Dey feared a trap, and she stood motionless; but her face
was on fire, and her tongue stiff in her mouth. A rap sounded on the
door.
"Oh!" cried the mother, falling on her knees, "save him! save him!"
"Yes, we will save him," said the official, giving her a look of
passion; "if it costs us our life, we will save him."
"I am lost!" she murmured, as the prosecutor raised her courteously.
"Madame," he said, with an oratorical movement, "I will owe you only--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: your father's side of your marrying to advantage; where possessions are so
extensive as those of your family, the wish of increasing them, if not
strictly reasonable, is too common to excite surprize or resentment. He has
a right to require; a woman of fortune in his daughter-in-law, and I am
sometimes quarrelling with myself for suffering you to form a connection so
imprudent; but the influence of reason is often acknowledged too late by
those who feel like me. I have now been but a few months a widow, and,
however little indebted to my husband's memory for any happiness derived
from him during a union of some years, I cannot forget that the indelicacy
of so early a second marriage must subject me to the censure of the world,
and incur, what would be still more insupportable, the displeasure of Mr.
Lady Susan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: that we take our party as to profession, pursuits and matrimony.
In youth, therefore, the turn is given; in youth the education even
of the next generation is given; in youth the private and public
character is determined; and the term of life extending but from youth
to age, life ought to begin well from youth, and more especially
before we take our party as to our principal objects. But your
biography will not merely teach self-education, but the education
of a wise man; and the wisest man will receive lights and improve
his progress, by seeing detailed the conduct of another wise man.
And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps, when we see
our race has been blundering on in the dark, almost without a guide
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
