| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: advertisements; though I produce certificates under the ministers
and church-wardens hands I am alive, and attest the same on oath
at quarter-sessions, out comes a full and true relation of the
death and interment of John Partridge; Truth is bore down,
attestations neglected, the testimony of sober persons despised,
and a man is looked upon by his neighbours as if he had been
seven years dead, and is buried alive in the midst of his friends
and acquaintance.
Now can any man of common sense think it consistent with the
honour of my profession, and not much beneath the dignity of a
philosopher, to stand bawling before his own door? ---- Alive!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: "Are you aware, monsieur," resumed the marquise, turning to Eugene,
"that what you have just said is a great impertinence?"
"If I did not know the strictness of your principles," he answered,
naively, "I should think that you wished either to give me ideas which
I deny myself, or else to tear a secret from me. But perhaps you are
only amusing yourself with me."
The marquise smiled. That smile annoyed Eugene.
"Madame," he said, "can you still believe in an offence I have not
committed? I earnestly hope that chance may not enable you to discover
the name of the person who ought to have read that letter."
"What! can it be STILL Madame de Nucingen?" cried Madame de Listomere,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: penetrating to the soul without neglecting the body; or rather, a
power of grasping external details so thoroughly that they never
detained me for a moment, and at once I passed beyond and through
them. I could enter into the life of the human creatures whom I
watched, just as the dervish in the /Arabian Nights/ could pass into
any soul or body after pronouncing a certain formula.
If I met a working man and his wife in the streets between eleven
o'clock and midnight on their way home from the Ambigu Comique, I used
to amuse myself by following them from the Boulevard du Pont aux Choux
to the Boulevard Beaumarchais. The good folk would begin by talking
about the play; then from one thing to another they would come to
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