| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod. Do
you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves
and softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and
yielding; when a shrivelled heart has learned to expand and
contract and to beat under this discipline; when the brain has
capitulated--then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel
springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affectations
and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a most
magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney
takes fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like
iron in the forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: And so their and our fathers, and these, too, our brethren, being nobly
born and having been brought up in all freedom, did both in their public
and private capacity many noble deeds famous over the whole world. They
were the deeds of men who thought that they ought to fight both against
Hellenes for the sake of Hellenes on behalf of freedom, and against
barbarians in the common interest of Hellas. Time would fail me to tell of
their defence of their country against the invasion of Eumolpus and the
Amazons, or of their defence of the Argives against the Cadmeians, or of
the Heracleids against the Argives; besides, the poets have already
declared in song to all mankind their glory, and therefore any
commemoration of their deeds in prose which we might attempt would hold a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: This enquiry was, however, cut short by the entrance of the men. And from
the glance that came from Richard's eyes as they immediately sought out
his wife, Mrs. Davenport knew that he could not have done anything very
severe to Ethel when she made that threat to him during their drive.
Richard at once made his way to the easy-chair arranged each night in a
good position for the narrator of the evening, and baptised "The
Singstool" by Mr. Graves. Mr. Graves was an ardent Wagnerian, and
especially devoted to The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.
"Shall we have," he whispered to Mr. Hillard, "a Beckmesser fiasco
to-night, or will it be a Walter success?"
But Mr. Hillard, besides being an author and a critic, cared little for
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