| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: of the 8th Artillery. The two officers listened gravely enough
to Servadac's request that they would act as his seconds in an affair
of honor, but could not resist a smile on hearing that the dispute
between him and the count had originated in a musical discussion.
Surely, they suggested, the matter might be easily arranged; a few
slight concessions on either side, and all might be amicably adjusted.
But no representations on their part were of any avail.
Hector Servadac was inflexible.
"No concession is possible," he replied, resolutely. "Rossini has
been deeply injured, and I cannot suffer the injury to be unavenged.
Wagner is a fool. I shall keep my word. I am quite firm."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Book of Remarkable Criminals by H. B. Irving: exigencies of his situation, one of those crimes to which bad men
are driven in order to secure the fruits of other crimes. But
the Richard of Shakespeare is no child of circumstance. He
espouses deliberately a career of crime, as deliberately as Peace
or Holmes or Butler; he sets out "determined to prove a villain,"
to be "subtle, false and treacherous," to employ to gain his ends
"stern murder in the dir'st degree." The character is sometimes
criticised as being overdrawn and unreal. It may not be true to
the Richard of history, but it is very true to crime, and to the
historical criminal of the Borgian or Prussian type, in which
fraud and violence are made part of a deliberate system of so-
A Book of Remarkable Criminals |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: he sent for on purpose to undertake it. Insomuch that it amazed
those who did not well consider, to see the people always prefer
Phocion, who was so far from humoring them or courting their
favor, that he always thwarted and opposed them. But so it was,
as great men and princes are said to call in their flatterers when
dinner has been served, so the Athenians, upon slight occasions,
entertained and diverted themselves with their spruce speakers and
trim orators, but when it came to action, they were sober and
considerate enough to single out the austerest and wisest for
public employment, however much he might be opposed to their
wishes and sentiments. This, indeed, he made no scruple to admit,
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