| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: bird caught cutting a purse or slitting a throat, I confess my
heart sank. If I could get speech with the Cardinal, all would
probably be well; but if I failed in this, or if the case came
before him in strange guise, or if he were in a hard mood
himself, then it might go ill with me. The edict said, death!
And the lieutenant at the Chatelet did not put himself to much
trouble to hearten me. 'What! again M. de Berault?' he said,
raising his eyebrows as he received me at the gate, and
recognised me by the light of the brazier which his men were just
kindling outside. 'You are a very bold man, or a very foolhardy
one, to come here again. The old business, I suppose?'
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: marking the most select coterie in Dawson,--a coterie captioned by
the profane as the "official clique." Sitka Charley had travelled
trail with her once, when famine drew tight and a man's life was
less than a cup of flour, and his judgment placed her above all
women. Sitka Charley was an Indian; his criteria were primitive;
but his word was flat, and his verdict a hall-mark in every camp
under the circle.
These two women were man-conquering, man-subduing machines, each
in her own way, and their ways were different. Mrs. Eppingwell
ruled in her own house, and at the Barracks, where were younger
sons galore, to say nothing of the chiefs of the police, the
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: person who proposes a change. It would be quite easy to make England
a paradise, according to our present ideas, in a few years. There is
no mystery about it: the way has been pointed out over and over
again. The difficulty is not the way but the will. And we have no
will because the first thing done with us in childhood was to break
our will. Can anything be more disgusting than the spectacle of a
nation reading the biography of Gladstone and gloating over the
account of how he was flogged at Eton, two of his schoolfellows being
compelled to hold him down whilst he was flogged. Not long ago a
public body in England had to deal with the case of a schoolmaster
who, conceiving himself insulted by the smoking of a cigaret against
|
