| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: attorney says that those law proceedings will last quite six
months before your husband can be made to disgorge your fortune.
Well and good. I sold out my property in the funds that brought
in thirteen hundred and fifty livres a year, and bought a safe
annuity of twelve hundred francs a year for fifteen thousand
francs. Then I paid your tradesmen out of the rest of the
capital. As for me, children, I have a room upstairs for which I
pay fifty crowns a year; I can live like a prince on two francs a
day, and still have something left over. I shall not have to
spend anything much on clothes, for I never wear anything out.
This fortnight past I have been laughing in my sleeve, thinking
Father Goriot |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: and even should be granted, I ask, as a reasonable question,
By what means is such a corrupt and faithless court to be kept
to its engagements? Another parliament, nay, even the present,
may hereafter repeal the obligation, on the pretense,
of its being violently obtained, or unwisely granted;
and in that case, Where is our redress?--No going to law
with nations; cannon are the barristers of Crowns;
and the sword, not of justice, but of war, decides the suit.
To be on the footing of sixty-three, it is not sufficient,
that the laws only be put on the same state, but, that our circumstances,
likewise, be put on the same state; Our burnt and destroyed towns repaired
Common Sense |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: had so loved,--so admired for what he was, or might have been,
--and to whom she had kept her faith, alone of all the world,
wholly, unfalteringly, at every instant, and throughout life.
And here, in his late decline, the lost one had come back out of
his long and strange misfortune, and was thrown on her sympathy,
as it seemed, not merely for the bread of his physical existence,
but for everything that should keep him morally alive. She had
responded to the call. She had come forward,--our poor, gaunt
Hepzibah, in her rusty silks, with her rigid joints, and the
sad perversity of her scowl,-- ready to do her utmost; and with
affection enough, if that were all, to do a hundred times as much!
House of Seven Gables |
