| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: again (a /canard/, in the language of the orchestra), neither did the
dancers, nor, for that matter, did my old Italian's acolytes; for I
had made up my mind that he must be Italian, and an Italian he was.
There was something great, something too of the despot about this old
Homer bearing within him an /Odyssey/ doomed to oblivion. The
greatness was so real that it triumphed over his abject position; the
despotism so much a part of him, that it rose above his poverty.
There are violent passions which drive a man to good or evil, making
of him a hero or a convict; of these there was not one that had failed
to leave its traces on the grandly-hewn, lividly Italian face. You
trembled lest a flash of thought should suddenly light up the deep
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: pass, and returns to civil life, so they tell me, with a
dangerous knowledge that he is a suckling Von Moltke, and may
apply his learning when occasion offers. Given trouble, that man
will be a nuisance, because he is a hideously versatile American,
to begin with, as cock-sure of himself as a man can be, and with
all the racial disregard for human life to back him, through any
demi-semi-professional generalship.
In a country where, as the records of the daily papers show, men
engaged in a conflict with police or jails are all too ready to
adopt a military formation and get heavily shot in a sort of
cheap, half-constructed warfare, instead of being decently scared
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: So shall my sentence stand, for thou shalt die.
SEGASTO.
Thanks to your majesty.
KING.
But soft, Segasto, not for this offence.--
Long maist thou live, and when the sisters shall decree
to cut in twain the twisted thread of life,
Then let him die: for this I set thee free:
And for thy valour I will honour thee.
MUCEDORUS.
Thanks to your majesty.
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