| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they
are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: their ablest and bravest men; and a weaker and meaner generation was
left behind, to do the governing of the world. Let them live, and
keep what they had. If signs of vigour still appeared in France, in
the wars of Louis XIV. they were feverish, factitious, temporary--
soon, as the event proved, to droop into the general exhaustion. If
wars were still to be waged they were to be wars of succession, wars
of diplomacy; not wars of principle, waged for the mightiest
invisible interests of man. The exhaustion was general; and to it
we must attribute alike the changes and the conservatism of the
Ancien Regime. To it is owing that growth of a centralising
despotism, and of arbitrary regal power, which M. de Tocqueville has
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: linked together, and all are therefore deducible. Causes suggest
effects, effects lead back to causes. Science resuscitates even the
warts of the past ages.
Hence the keen interest inspired by an architectural description,
provided the imagination of the writer does not distort essential
facts. The mind is enabled by rigid deduction to link it with the
past; and to man, the past is singularly like the future; tell him
what has been, and you seldom fail to show him what will be. It is
rare indeed that the picture of a locality where lives are lived does
not recall to some their dawning hopes, to others their wasted faith.
The comparison between a present which disappoints man's secret wishes
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