| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: Committee of Public Safety, limited itself in reality, as
Fouquier-Tinville justly remarked during his trial, to executing
its orders. It surrounded itself at first with a few legal forms
which did not long survive. Interrogatory, defence, witnesses--
all were finally suppressed. Moral proof--that is, mere
suspicion--sufficed to procure condemnation. The president
usually contented himself with putting a vague question to the
accused. To work more rapidly still, Fouquier-Tinville proposed
to have the guillotine installed on the same premises as the
Tribunal.
This Tribunal sent indiscriminately to the scaffold all the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Witch, et. al by Anton Chekhov: mamma lived all her life with the gentry, and did not want to
marry a simple peasant. . . ."
"And so she fell into the master's hands," laughed Ptaha.
"She did transgress, that's true. She was pious, God-fearing, but
she did not keep her maiden purity. It is a sin, of course, a
great sin, there's no doubt about it, but to make up for it there
is, maybe, noble blood in me. Maybe I am only a peasant by class,
but in nature a noble gentleman."
The "noble gentleman" uttered all this in a soft, sugary tenor,
wrinkling up his narrow forehead and emitting creaking sounds
from his red, frozen little nose. Ptaha listened and looked
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: enjoyed at the time of the French revolution, so I think it
worth while to record the character of the entertainments at
present popular in Moscow.
Opera at the Great Theatre.--"Sadko" by Rimsky-Korsakov
and "Samson and Delilah" by Saint-Saens.
Small State Theatre.--"Besheny Dengi" by Ostrovsky and
"Starik" by Gorky.
Moscow Art Theatre.-- "The Cricket on the Hearth" by
Dickens and "The Death of Pazuchin" by Saltykov-Shtchedrin.
Opera. "Selo Stepantchiko" and "Coppellia."
People's Palace.--"Dubrovsky" by Napravnik and "Demon"
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