| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: emphasis, as if to say: "At this point there is a full stop. At
least so it seems."
He gave a short colourless sketch of the history of the
Extraordinary Commission. He referred to the various crises
with which it had had to deal, beginning with the drunken
pogroms in Petrograd, the suppression of the combined
anarchists and criminals in Moscow (he mentioned that after
that four hours' struggle which ended in the clearing out of
the anarchists' strongholds, criminality in Moscow
decreased by 80 per cent.), to the days of the Terror when,
now here, now there, armed risings against the Soviet were
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: Vandenesse, glad of this adorable reserve, kept his wife, by
deliberate calculations, in the temperate regions of conjugal
affection. He never condescended to seek a reward or even an
acknowledgment of the infinite pains which he gave himself; his wife
thought his luxury and good taste her natural right, and she felt no
gratitude for the fact that her pride and self-love had never
suffered. It was thus in everything. Kindness has its mishaps; often
it is attributed to temperament; people are seldom willing to
recognize it as the secret effort of a noble soul.
About this period of her life, Madame Felix de Vandenesse had attained
to a degree of worldly knowledge which enabled her to quit the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: And whisper of those days of yore -- "
"I'm having a friend," explained Mr. McQuirk,
"laid up with a broken leg, and he sent me after
it. He's a devil for songs and poetry when he can't
get out to drink."
"We have not," replied the young woman, with un-
concealed contempt. "But there is a new song out
that begins this way:
"'Let us sit together in the old armchair;
And while the firelight flickers we'll be comfortable there.'"
There will be no profit in following Mr. "Tiger"
The Voice of the City |
