| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the
necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of
superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for
empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as
simple as the Arab's or the Indian's? When I think of the
benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers
from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind
any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture.
Or what if I were to allow -- would it not be a singular allowance?
-- that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab's, in
proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: hind a partition. That was Maria Semenovna's
bedroom. She rose in her bed, looked at
Stepan with her mild frightened eyes, and crossed
herself.
Once more her look scared Stepan. He
dropped his eyes.
"Where is your money?" he asked, without
raising his face.
She did not answer.
"Where is the money?" asked Stepan again,
showing her his knife.
The Forged Coupon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: to the Rue Froid-Manteau, to a squalid and horrible house, where, on
the fifth floor, dwelt an old Italian named Gambara.
For five years past he had been left to himself, deserted by his wife;
he had gone through many misfortunes. An instrument on which he had
relied to make his fortune, and which he called a /Panharmonicon/, had
been sold by order of the Court on the public square, Place du
Chatelet, together with a cartload of music paper scrawled with notes.
The day after the sale, these scores had served in the market to wrap
up butter, fish, and fruit.
Thus the three grand operas of which the poor man would boast, but
which an old Neapolitan cook, who was now but a patcher up of broken
Gambara |
