| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: to time with a swaggering grace, and looked round disdainfully on the
rest of the crew. A high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only
spoke with her mother or with a churchman of high rank, who was
evidently a relation. All these persons made a great deal of noise,
and talked among themselves as though there were no one else in the
boat; yet close beside them sat a man of great importance in the
district, a stout burgher of Bruges, wrapped about with a vast cloak.
His servant, armed to the teeth, had set down a couple of bags filled
with gold at his side. Next to the burgher came a man of learning, a
doctor of the University of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk.
This little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each other,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: most illustrious Scotchman, Mr. Thomas Carlyle, first vindicated the
great German Realists from the vulgar misconceptions about them which
were so common at the beginning of this century, and brought the minds
of studious men to a more just appreciation of the philosophic severity,
the moral grandeur, of such thinkers as Emmanuel Kant, and Gottlieb
Fichte. To another Scotch gentleman, who, I believe, has honoured me by
his presence here to-night, we owe most valuable translations of some of
Fichte's works; to be followed, I trust, by more. And though, as a
humble disciple of Bacon, I cannot but think that the method both of
Kant and Fichte possesses somewhat of the same inherent defect as the
method of the Neoplatonist school, yet I should be most unfair did I not
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: was speed. The musicians played in intent fury. A woman was
singing and smiling upon the stage, but no one took notice of her.
The rate at which the piano, cornet and violins were going, seemed
to impart wildness to the half-drunken crowd. Beer glasses were
emptied at a gulp and conversation became a rapid chatter.
The smoke eddied and swirled like a shadowy river hurrying toward
some unseen falls. Pete and Maggie entered the hall and took chairs
at a table near the door. The woman who was seated there made
an attempt to occupy Pete's attention and, failing, went away.
Three weeks had passed since the girl had left home. The air of
spaniel-like dependence had been magnified and showed its direct
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
