| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: what should he think?--mystical irresistible light, this would make
the matter not better, but worse, inasmuch as her original adoption
of his own curiosity had quite become the basis of her life. She
had been living to see what would BE to be seen, and it would quite
lacerate her to have to give up before the accomplishment of the
vision. These reflexions, as I say, quickened his generosity; yet,
make them as he might, he saw himself, with the lapse of the
period, more and more disconcerted. It lapsed for him with a
strange steady sweep, and the oddest oddity was that it gave him,
independently of the threat of much inconvenience, almost the only
positive surprise his career, if career it could be called, had yet
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: have been willing to stand and fight, and to have fled; but when the ranks
of the Persians were broken, they turned upon them like cavalry, and won
the battle of Plataea.
LACHES: That is true.
SOCRATES: That was my meaning when I said that I was to blame in having
put my question badly, and that this was the reason of your answering
badly. For I meant to ask you not only about the courage of heavy-armed
soldiers, but about the courage of cavalry and every other style of
soldier; and not only who are courageous in war, but who are courageous in
perils by sea, and who in disease, or in poverty, or again in politics, are
courageous; and not only who are courageous against pain or fear, but
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: listened to these conversations among the merchants, he foresaw the
means of fortune, and without loss of time he set about making himself
the owner of landed property, a banker, and a shipping-merchant. He
bought land and houses in the town, and despatched a vessel to New
York freighted with silks purchased in Lyons at reduced prices. He
sent Dumay on the ship as his agent; and when the latter returned,
after making a double profit by the sale of the silks and the purchase
of cottons at a low valuation, he found the colonel installed with his
family in the handsomest house in the rue Royale, and studying the
principles of banking with the prodigious activity and intelligence of
a native of Provence.
Modeste Mignon |
