| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark
house with the curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious.
But straightway thereafter, or course, came the singing, and it
does seem to me that nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely
perfect and satisfactory to the untutored but to leave out the
vocal parts. I wish I could see a Wagner opera done in pantomime
once. Then one would have the lovely orchestration unvexed to
listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the bewildering beautiful
scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb acting couldn't
mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything in the
Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: about.
Marshal Prince Wissembourg and the Baron de Nucingen signed in behalf
of the bride, the Comtes de Rastignac and Popinot in behalf of
Steinbock. Then, as the highest nobility among the Polish emigrants
had been civil to Count Steinbock since he had become famous, the
artist thought himself bound to invite them. The State Council, and
the War Office to which the Baron belonged, and the army, anxious to
do honor to the Comte de Forzheim, were all represented by their
magnates. There were nearly two hundred indispensable invitations. How
natural, then, that little Madame Marneffe was bent on figuring in all
her glory amid such an assembly. The Baroness had, a month since, sold
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: most distinguished members. His labors did credit to the body
of engineers who are gradually devouring the carboniferous
subsoil of the United Kingdom, as much at Cardiff and Newcastle,
as in the southern counties of Scotland. However, it was more
particularly in the depths of the mysterious mines of Aberfoyle,
which border on the Alloa mines and occupy part of the county
of Stirling, that the name of Starr had acquired the greatest renown.
There, the greater part of his existence had been passed.
Besides this, James Starr belonged to the Scottish Antiquarian Society,
of which he had been made president. He was also included
amongst the most active members of the Royal Institution; and the
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