| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: look at his barber.
"Ventre-Mahom, sire, the inheritance would be a fine one between you
and the devil!"
"There, there!" said the king, "don't put bad ideas into my head. My
crony is a more faithful man than those whose fortunes I have made--
perhaps because he owes me nothing."
For the last two years Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely alone with
his aged sister, who was thought a witch. A tailor in the neighborhood
declared that he had often seen her at night, on the roof of the
house, waiting for the hour of the witches' sabbath. This fact seemed
the more extraordinary because it was known to be the miser's custom
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: something better than a neutral, and but a little--yet little as it is you
see it was of some service to him.
My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as the
best logician could shew him--yet so strange is the weakness of man at the
same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of
it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many
stories in Hafen Slawkenbergius's Decades full as entertaining as this I am
translating, yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over
with half the delight--it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses
together--his Names and his Noses.--I will be bold to say, he might have
read all the books in the Alexandrian Library, had not fate taken other
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: "Very slightly," I answered.
"Well, here are learned men having to learn," said the Captain.
"Come, sit down, and I will tell you a curious episode in this history.
Sir, listen well," said he; "this history will interest you on one side,
for it will answer a question which doubtless you have not been
able to solve."
"I listen, Captain," said I, not knowing what my interlocutor was driving at,
and asking myself if this incident was bearing on our projected flight.
"Sir, if you have no objection, we will go back to 1702. You cannot
be ignorant that your king, Louis XIV, thinking that the gesture
of a potentate was sufficient to bring the Pyrenees under his yoke,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
