| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: is a free man, and he can become a rich one. It is not as it used to
be. If a peasant lays by his money, he can always buy a bit of land
and become his own master."
"I've seen the olden time and I've seen the new, my dear wise
gentleman," said Fourchon; "the sign over the door has changed, that's
true, but the wine is the same,--to-day is the younger brother of
yesterday, that's all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks
free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always
there,--I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left
our hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the
best of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: gateway of Kaol, I leaped above their heads, and fashioning my
tactics after those of the hideous plant men of Dor, struck down
upon my enemies' heads as I passed above them.
From the city the red warriors were rushing toward us, and from
the jungle the savage horde of green men were coming to meet them.
In a moment I was in the very center of as fierce and bloody a
battle as I had ever passed through.
These Kaolians are most noble fighters, nor are the green men
of the equator one whit less warlike than their cold, cruel cousins
The Warlord of Mars |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ferragus by Honore de Balzac: huge lobster, invisibly manipulated by thirty thousand men or women,
of whom each individual occupies a space of six square feet, but has a
kitchen, a workshop, a bed, children, a garden, little light to see
by, but must see all. Imperceptibly, the articulations begin to crack;
motion communicates itself; the street speaks. By mid-day, all is
alive; the chimneys smoke, the monster eats; then he roars, and his
thousand paws begin to ramp. Splendid spectacle! But, O Paris! he who
has not admired your gloomy passages, your gleams and flashes of
light, your deep and silent /cul-de-sacs/, who has not listened to
your murmurings between midnight and two in the morning, knows nothing
as yet of your true poesy, nor of your broad and fantastic contrasts.
Ferragus |
