| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: we allow it? Hadn't I better get up and--Oh, Mary, what ought we to
do?--what do you think we--" [Halliday's voice. "Fifteen I'm bid!--
fifteen for the sack!--twenty!--ah, thanks!--thirty--thanks again!
Thirty, thirty, thirty!--do I hear forty?--forty it is! Keep the
ball rolling, gentlemen, keep it rolling!--fifty! --thanks, noble
Roman!--going at fifty, fifty, fifty!--seventy! --ninety!--
splendid!--a hundred!--pile it up, pile it up!--hundred and twenty--
forty!--just in time!--hundred and fifty!--Two hundred!--superb! Do
I hear two h--thanks! --two hundred and fifty!--"]
"It is another temptation, Edward--I'm all in a tremble --but, oh,
we've escaped one temptation, and that ought to warn us, to--["Six
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: diamond in his shirt frill, and gold rings in his ears.
" 'Monsieur,' said I, 'whom have I the honor of addressing?'--He took
a chair, placed himself in front of my fire, put his hat on my table,
and answered while he rubbed his hands: 'Dear me, it is very cold.--
Monsieur, I am Monsieur Regnault.'
" I was encouraging myself by saying to myself, '/Il bondo cani!/
Seek!'
" 'I am,' he went on, 'notary at Vendome.'
" 'I am delighted to hear it, monsieur,' I exclaimed. 'But I am not in
a position to make a will for reasons best known to myself.'
" 'One moment!' said he, holding up his hand as though to gain
La Grande Breteche |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: seeing Sunderland. He laughed me to scorn at first, and threatened me
with the Tower. But I told him the letter was in safe hands and would
remain there in earnest of his good behaviour, and that did he have me
arrested it would instantly be laid before the King and bring his own
head to the block more surely even than my own. It frightened him; but
it had scarcely done so, sweet, had he known that that precious letter
was still in my boot, for my boot was on my leg, and my leg was in the
room with the rest of me.
"He surrendered at last, and gave me papers proving that Trenchard and
I - for I stipulated for old Nick's safety too - were His Majesty's
accredited agents in the West. I loathed the title. But . ." - he
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