| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: material is dear, and the expense naturally retards the great advance
which the French press is bound to make. Now you cannot increase the
output of linen rags, a given population gives a pretty constant
result, and it only increases with the birth-rate. To make any
perceptible difference in the population for this purpose, it would
take a quarter of a century and a great revolution in habits of life,
trade, and agriculture. And if the supply of linen rags is not enough
to meet one-half nor one-third of the demand, some cheaper material
than linen rags must be found for cheap paper. This deduction is based
on facts that came under my knowledge here. The Angouleme paper-
makers, the last to use pure linen rags, say that the proportion of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: lamp, but Cornelius hit upon the lucky idea of fixing it to
the bars, so as to afford her a little rest. Rosa was then
enabled to follow with her finger the letters and syllables,
which she was to spell for Cornelius, who with a straw
pointed out the letters to his attentive pupil through the
holes of the grating.
The light of the lamp illuminated the rich complexion of
Rosa, her blue liquid eyes, and her golden hair under her
head-dress of gold brocade, with her fingers held up, and
showing in the blood, as it flowed downwards in the veins
that pale pink hue which shines before the light owing to
The Black Tulip |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: neutrality which lay between the Communion people
of the parish and the drunken section, -- that is, he went
to church, but yawned privately by the time the con-
gegation reached the Nicene creed,- and thought of
what there would be for dinner when he meant to be
listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as
it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends
and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a
bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good
man; when they were neither, he was a man whose
moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Far From the Madding Crowd |
