| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: resolution of May 8. Upon these grounds, Ledru-Rollin submitted on June
11, 1849, a motion impeaching Bonaparte and his Ministers. Instigated
by the wasp-stings of Thiers, he even allowed himself to be carried away
to the point of threatening to defend the Constitution by all means,
even arms in hand. The Mountain rose as one man, and repeated the
challenge. On June 12, the National Assembly rejected the notion to
impeach, and the Mountain left the parliament. The events of June 13
are known: the proclamation by a part of the Mountain pronouncing
Napoleon and his Ministers "outside the pale of the Constitution"; the
street parades of the democratic National Guards, who, unarmed as they
were, flew apart at contact with the troops of Changarnier; etc., etc.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: plunged into the drift and touched something that was not snow.
This he seized and, pulling it gently toward him, found it to be
a child. The next moment he had lifted it in his arms and carried
it into the house.
The wind followed him through the door, but Claus shut it out quickly.
He laid the rescued child on the hearth, and brushing away the snow he
discovered it to be Weekum, a little boy who lived in a house beyond
the Valley.
Claus wrapped a warm blanket around the little one and rubbed the
frost from its limbs. Before long the child opened his eyes and,
seeing where he was, smiled happily. Then Claus warmed milk and fed
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: Sometimes of an evening he went down to the bridge of Tours. There was
a lieutenant there on half-pay, an Imperial naval officer, whose manly
face, medal, and gait had made an impression on the boy's imagination,
and the officer on his side had taken a liking to the lad, whose eyes
sparkled with energy. Louis, hungering for tales of adventure, and
eager for information, used to follow in the lieutenant's wake for the
chance of a chat with him. It so happened that the sailor had a friend
and comrade in the colonel of a regiment of infantry, struck off the
rolls like himself; and young Louis-Gaston had a chance of learning
what life was like in camp or on board a man-of-war. Of course, he
plied the veterans with questions; and when he had made up his mind to
|
