| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: Gondreville had possessed sufficient power over Louis XVIII. to
prevent this appointment of Michu.
It was by the advice of the Comte de Gondreville that Colonel Giguet
made his son a lawyer. Simon had all the more opportunity of shining
at the bar in the arrondissement of Arcis because he was the only
barrister, solicitors pleading their own cases in these petty
localities. The young man had really secured certain triumphs in the
court of assizes of the Aube, but he was none the less an object of
derision to Frederic Marest, /procureur-du-roi/, Olivier Vinet, the
substitute /procureur/, and the judge, Michu,--the three best minds in
the court.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: the radiance of womanhood and a-clash with music. Darkness now,
and silence, and a great haunted hush over all, save for the
distant cheery voice of a stage hand humming a bar of the opera.
The glimmer of gas makes a halo about the bowed white head of a
little old man putting his violin carefully away in its case with
aged, trembling, nervous fingers. Old M'sieu Fortier was the
last one out every night.
Outside the air was murky, foggy. Gas and electricity were but
faint splotches of light on the thick curtain of fog and mist.
Around the opera was a mighty bustle of carriages and drivers and
footmen, with a car gaining headway in the street now and then, a
 The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering
hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were other
fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped
northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept
along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the
soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed.
But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to
bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of
these conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been
turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by
a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of
|