| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: Gallis idem esse faciendum quod Helvetii fecerint, ut domo emigrent, aliud
domicilium, alias sedes, remotas a Germanis, petant fortunamque,
quaecumque accidat, experiantur. Haec si enuntiata Ariovisto sint, non
dubitare quin de omnibus obsidibus qui apud eum sint gravissimum
supplicium sumat. Caesarem vel auctoritate sua atque exercitus vel
recenti victoria vel nomine populi Romani deterrere posse ne maior
multitudo Germanorum Rhenum traducatur, Galliamque omnem ab Ariovisti
iniuria posse defendere.
Hac oratione ab Diviciaco habita omnes qui aderant magno fletu
auxilium a Caesare petere coeperunt. Animadvertit Caesar unos ex omnibus
Sequanos nihil earum rerum facere quas ceteri facerent sed tristes capite
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: with them I should have got the men to do anything? Not It!
The bo's'n perhaps? Perhaps! It wasn't a heavy sea--it was a sea
gone mad! I suppose the end of the world will be something like that;
and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with it--
but to have to face it day after day--I don't blame anybody.
I was precious little better than the rest. Only--I was an officer
of that old coal wagon, anyhow--"
"I quite understand," I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear.
He was out of breath with whispering; I could hear him pant slightly.
It was all very simple. The same strung-up force which had given twenty-four
men a chance, at least, for their lives, had, in a sort of recoil,
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: absent features. It is all hideous amid prettiness! Juvenal's lash, in
the hands of the appraiser, scatters the shabby muffs, the ragged furs
of courtesans at bay.
There is a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there we find a
bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an
old hag is always to be seen crouching--first cousin to Usury, the
skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the
contents, so well is she used to sell the covering--the gown without
the woman, or the woman without the gown!
Here Asie was in her element, like the warder among convicts, like a
vulture red-beaked amid corpses; more terrible than the savage horrors
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