| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: over England, to convert their useless female habits into beds,
window-curtains, chairs, and joint-stools; undressing themselves
(as it were) before their transformation.
The philosophy of this transformation will not seem surprizing to
people who search into the bottom of things. Madam Bourignon, a
devout French lady, has shewn us, how man was at first created
male and female in one individual, having the faculty of
propagation within himself: A circumstance necessary to the state
of innocence, wherein a man's happiness was not to depend upon
the caprice of another. It was not till after he had made a faux
pas, that he had his female mate. Many such transformations of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: paving courtyards, alleys, avenues to houses, kitchens, footways on
the sides of the High Streets, and the like; and is very profitable
to the place, as also in the number of shipping employed in
bringing it to London. There are also several rocks of very good
marble, only that the veins in the stone are not black and white,
as the Italian, but grey, red, and other colours.
From hence to Weymouth, which is 22 miles, we rode in view of the
sea; the country is open, and in some respects pleasant, but not
like the northern parts of the county, which are all fine carpet-
ground, soft as velvet, and the herbage sweet as garden herbs,
which makes their sheep be the best in England, if not in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: general of the department of the Aube, presented a singular
appearance. All the furniture had been removed except the curtains to
the windows, the ornaments on the fireplace, the chandelier, and the
tea-table. An Aubusson carpet, taken up two weeks before the usual
time, obstructed the steps of the portico, and the floor had been
violently rubbed and polished, though without increasing its usual
brightness. All this was a species of domestic premonition concerning
the result of the elections which were about to take place over the
whole surface of France. Often things are as spiritually intelligent
as men,--an argument in favor of the occult sciences.
The old man-servant of Colonel Giguet, Madame Marion's older brother,
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