| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: candle on the common stair. There was a lamp on the landing by
which he could always light it when he came home late, and having a
key of the door about him he could enter and go to bed at his
pleasure.
He opened the glass of the dull lamp, whose wick, burnt up and
swollen like a drunkard's nose, came flying off in little
carbuncles at the candle's touch, and scattering hot sparks about,
rendered it matter of some difficulty to kindle the lazy taper;
when a noise, as of a man snoring deeply some steps higher up,
caused him to pause and listen. It was the heavy breathing of a
sleeper, close at hand. Some fellow had lain down on the open
Barnaby Rudge |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: in your face on pretence that you had come to look after my health?
Haven't you had the most accommodating and the least domineering uncle
that there is in France,--I won't say Europe, because that might be
too presumptuous. You write to me, or you don't write,--no matter, I
live on pledged affection, and I am making you the prettiest estate in
all Touraine, the envy of the department. To be sure, I don't intend
to let you have it till the last possible moment, but that's an
excusable little fancy, isn't it? And what does monsieur himself do?--
sells his own property and lives like a lackey!--"
"Uncle--"
"I'm not talking about uncles, I'm talking nephew. I have a right to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: but which they have caught from each other, as they catch fever or
small-pox; as unconsciously, and yet as practically and potently;
just as the nineteenth century has caught from the philosophers of
the eighteenth most practical rules of conduct, without even (in
most cases) having read a word of their works.
And what has this century caught from these philosophers? One rule
it has learnt, and that a most practical one--to appeal in all
cases, as much as possible, to "Reason and the Laws of Nature."
That, at least, the philosophers tried to do. Often they failed.
Their conceptions of reason and of the laws of nature being often
incorrect, they appealed to unreason and to laws which were not
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