| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: repeated thousands of times in diverse ways, make Paris the most
entertaining and most philosophical city in the world, I played a
mental /macedoine/[*], half jesting, half funereal. With my left foot
I kept time to the music, and the other felt as if it were in a tomb.
My leg was, in fact, frozen by one of those draughts which congeal one
half of the body while the other suffers from the intense heat of the
salons--a state of things not unusual at balls.
[*] /Macedoine/, in the sense in which it is here used, is a game, or
rather a series of games, of cards, each player, when it is his
turn to deal, selecting the game to be played.
"Monsieur de Lanty has not owned this house very long, has he?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: evenings, and, half-heard, try and make an end to them; to look
drowsily down into the garden, where the afternoon sunshine was
still so summer-like that a few holly-hocks persisted in showing
their honest red faces along the walls, and the very leaves that
filled the paths would not wither, but kept up a wholesome ruddy
brown. One of the sisters had a poultry-yard in it, which he
could see: the wall around it was of stone covered with a brown
feathery lichen, which every rooster in that yard was determined
to stand on, or perish in the attempt; and Holmes would watch,
through the quiet, bright mornings, the frantic ambition of the
successful aspirant with an amused smile.
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: they, these tusks. Nay, while the creature is living, under fierce
excitement they will be all aglow; or else how comes it that though he
fail to gore the dogs, yet at the blow the fine hairs of their coats
are singed in flecks and patches?[37]
[36] {euthus}, i.e. "for a few seconds after death."
[37] The belief is still current, I am told, in parts of India.
So much and even greater trouble may be loked for from the wild boar
before capture; I speak of the male animal. If it should be a sow that
falls into the toils, the huntsman should run up and prod her, taking
care not to be pushed off his legs and fall, in which case he cannot
escape being trampled on and bitten. Ergo, he will not voluntarily get
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