| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: such courage? Where did you get such ideas? What impudence towards
their chiefs and superiors has spread among the young generation!" The
prominent personage apparently had not observed that Akakiy
Akakievitch was already in the neighbourhood of fifty. If he could be
called a young man, it must have been in comparison with some one who
was twenty. "Do you know to whom you speak? Do you realise who stands
before you? Do you realise it? do you realise it? I ask you!" Then he
stamped his foot and raised his voice to such a pitch that it would
have frightened even a different man from Akakiy Akakievitch.
Akakiy Akakievitch's senses failed him; he staggered, trembled in
every limb, and, if the porters had not run to support him, would have
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: artist received them with smiles. The rascal had shaved and put on
clean linen; he had also arranged his hair in a pleasing manner, and
chosen a very becoming pair of trousers and red leather slippers with
pointed toes. The family replied with smiles as flattering as those of
the artist. Virginie became the color of her hair, lowered her eyes,
and turned aside her head to look at the sketches. Pierre Grassou
thought these little affectations charming, Virginie had such grace;
happily she didn't look like her father or her mother; but whom did
she look like?
During this sitting there were little skirmishes between the family
and the painter, who had the audacity to call pere Vervelle witty.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
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