| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: the more-fortunes who are still in place and were once his mates.
Have you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that
is left of his departed distinction--the "privilege of the floor";
and works it hard and gets what he can out of it. That is the saddest
figure I know of.
Yes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily
scoff at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we
only had his chance--ah! "Senator" is not a legitimate title.
A Senator has no more right to be addressed by it than have you
or I; but, in the several state capitals and in Washington,
there are five thousand Senators who take very kindly to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: consummated, which is to say, in 1816. By that time the
revolution of the Hundred Days had let in the light on the mind
of Louis XVIII. In spite of his surroundings, he comprehended
the situation and the age in which he was living; and it was only
later, when this Louis XI, without the axe, lay stricken down by
disease, that those about him got the upper hand. The Duchesse
de Langeais, a Navarreins by birth, came of a ducal house which
had made a point of never marrying below its rank since the reign
of Louis XIV. Every daughter of the house must sooner or later
take a tabouret at Court. So, Antoinette de Navarreins, at the
age of eighteen, came out of the profound solitude in which her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: Break my short sleep, and skim before my sight!
I might have promis'd to myself those harms,
Mad as I was, when I, with mortal arms,
Presum'd against immortal pow'rs to move,
And violate with wounds the Queen of Love.
Such arms this hand shall never more employ;
No hate remains with me to ruin'd Troy.
I war not with its dust; nor am I glad
To think of past events, or good or bad.
Your presents I return: whate'er you bring
To buy my friendship, send the Trojan king.
Aeneid |
