| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: folly of our laws of inheritance. Lecamus saw himself first president
of the Parliament of Paris in the person of his grandson.
Christophe, godson of the famous historian de Thou, was given a most
solid education; but it had led him to doubt and to the spirit of
examination which was then affecting both the Faculties and the
students of the universities. Christophe was, at the period of which
we are now writing, pursuing his studies for the bar, that first step
toward the magistracy. The old furrier was pretending to some
hesitation as to his son. Sometimes he seemed to wish to make
Christophe his successor; then again he spoke of him as a lawyer; but
in his heart he was ambitious of a place for this son as Councillor of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: 1852 he had occasion to see both men and masters at their worst, in
the excitement of a strike; and very foolishly (after their custom)
both would seem to have behaved. Beginning with a fair show of
justice on either side, the masters stultified their cause by
obstinate impolicy, and the men disgraced their order by acts of
outrage. 'On Wednesday last,' writes Fleeming, 'about three
thousand banded round Fairbairn's door at 6 o'clock: men, women,
and children, factory boys and girls, the lowest of the low in a
very low place. Orders came that no one was to leave the works;
but the men inside (Knobsticks, as they are called) were precious
hungry and thought they would venture. Two of my companions and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: I went to my room, bound a pink scarf about my hair, and took a volume of
Morike's lyrics into the garden. A great bush of purple lilac grew behind
the summer-house. There I sat down, finding a sad significance in the
delicate suggestion of half mourning. I began to write a poem myself.
"They sway and languish dreamily,
And we, close pressed, are kissing there."
It ended! "Close pressed" did not sound at all fascinating. Savoured of
wardrobes. Did my wild rose then already trail in the dust? I chewed a
leaf and hugged my knees. Then--magic moment--I heard voices from the
summer-house, the sister of the Baroness and the student from Bonn.
Second-hand was better than nothing; I pricked up my ears.
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