| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: eclipse, or even an unusually dark day; and he shook the tail of
the last comet over the heads of his customers and disciples
until they were nearly frightened out of their wits. He has
lately got hold of a popular legend or prophecy, on which he
has been unusually eloquent. There has been a saying current
among the ancient sibyls, who treasure up these things, that
when the grasshopper on the top of the Exchange shook hands
with the dragon on the top of Bow Church Steeple, fearful
events would take place. This strange conjunction, it seems, has
as strangely come to pass. The same architect has been engaged
lately on the repairs of the cupola of the Exchange, and the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: as a man first enriched at fifty remains poor all his life, even if he
does not curtail it by drinking himself to death in the first wild
ecstasy of being able to swallow as much as he likes for the first
time. You cannot govern men brought up as slaves otherwise than as
slaves are governed. You may pile Bills of Right and Habeas Corpus
Acts on Great Charters; promulgate American Constitutions; burn the
chateaux and guillotine the seigneurs; chop off the heads of kings and
queens and set up Democracy on the ruins of feudalism: the end of it
all for us is that already in the twentieth century there has been as
much brute coercion and savage intolerance, as much flogging and
hanging, as much impudent injustice on the bench and lustful rancor in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: be reduced to pay them with that," he added, pulling from his pocket a
nut, which he had taken from Madame Madou and carefully preserved.
He showed the nut between his fingers to Constance and Cesarine. His
wife was silent, but Cesarine, much puzzled, said to her father, as
she gave him his coffee, "What do you mean, papa,--are you joking?"
The perfumer, as well as the clerks, had detected during dinner the
glances which Popinot had cast at Cesarine, and he resolved to clear
up his suspicions.
"Well, my little daughter," he said, "this nut will revolutionize our
home. From this day forth there will be one person the less under my
roof."
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
