| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: "In this lamentable business, the bourgeoisie plays the same /role/ as
the pioneers of America," continued Clousier. "It buys up great
estates, which the peasantry could not otherwise acquire. It cuts them
up and then sells, either at auction or in small lots at private sale,
to the peasants. Everything is judged by figures in these days, and I
know none more eloquent than these. France has ninety-nine million
acres, which, subtracting highways, roads, dunes, canals, and barren,
uncultivated regions deserted by capital, may be reduced to eighty
millions. Now out of eighty millions of acres to thirty-two millions
of inhabitants we find one hundred and twenty-five millions of small
lots registered on the tax-list (I don't give fractions). Thus, you
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: substance of history for endless years, giving rise here to
congestions, here to chronic devastating wars, and everywhere to
a discomfort and disorderliness that was at its best only
picturesque, is at an end. Men spread now, with the whole power
of the race to aid them, into every available region of the
earth. Their cities are no longer tethered to running water and
the proximity of cultivation, their plans are no longer affected
by strategic considerations or thoughts of social insecurity. The
aeroplane and the nearly costless mobile car have abolished trade
routes; a common language and a universal law have abolished a
thousand restraining inconveniences, and so an astonishing
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: liked, but I was going; and being a plucky fellow, a Swazi by birth, he
shrugged his shoulders, muttered that I was mad or bewitched, and
followed doggedly in my tracks.
"We soon reached the kloof, which was about three hundred yards in
length and but sparsely wooded, and then the real fun began. There
might be a lion behind every bush--there certainly were four lions
somewhere; the delicate question was, where. I peeped and poked and
looked in every possible direction, with my heart in my mouth, and was
at last rewarded by catching a glimpse of something yellow moving behind
a bush. At the same moment, from another bush opposite me out burst one
of the cubs and galloped back towards the burnt pan. I whipped round
Long Odds |
