| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: wished to earn a name for squeamishness. Madame, you could hardly
imagine what a bachelor's breakfast-party is like. It means superb
display and a studied refinement seldom seen; the luxury of a miser
when vanity leads him to be sumptuous for a day.
"You are surprised as you enter the room at the neatness of the table,
dazzling by reason of its silver and crystal and linen damask. Life is
here in full bloom; the young fellows are graceful to behold; they
smile and talk in low, demure voices like so many brides; everything
about them looks girlish. Two hours later you might take the room for
a battlefield after the fight. Broken glasses, serviettes crumpled and
torn to rags lie strewn about among the nauseous-looking remnants of
Gobseck |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Aesop's Fables by Aesop: and brayed, but then every one knew him, and his owner came up and
gave him a sound cudgelling for the fright he had caused. And
shortly afterwards a Fox came up to him and said: "Ah, I knew you
by your voice."
Fine clothes may disguise, but
silly words will disclose a fool.
The Two Fellows and the Bear
Two Fellows were travelling together through a wood, when a
Bear rushed out upon them. One of the travellers happened to be
in front, and he seized hold of the branch of a tree, and hid
himself among the leaves. The other, seeing no help for it, threw
Aesop's Fables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: offer an example of what Lysias might have said, and of how much better he
might have written in his own style. The orators had recourse to their
favourite loci communes, one of which, as we find in Lysias, was the
shortness of the time allowed them for preparation. But Socrates points
out that they had them always ready for delivery, and that there was no
difficulty in improvising any number of such orations. To praise the
Athenians among the Athenians was easy,--to praise them among the
Lacedaemonians would have been a much more difficult task. Socrates
himself has turned rhetorician, having learned of a woman, Aspasia, the
mistress of Pericles; and any one whose teachers had been far inferior to
his own--say, one who had learned from Antiphon the Rhamnusian--would be
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