| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne: with his arms crossed, gliding like a spectre rather than walking.
His breast was swelling with sobs; and I heard him murmur these words
(the last which ever struck my ear):
"Almighty God! enough! enough!"
Was it a confession of remorse which thus escaped from this man's conscience?
In desperation, I rushed through the library, mounted the central
staircase, and, following the upper flight, reached the boat.
I crept through the opening, which had already admitted
my two companions.
"Let us go! let us go!" I exclaimed.
"Directly!" replied the Canadian.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: [22] These remarks refer to the French newspaper press.--Note of
the Translator.
The close watching of the course of opinion has become to-day the
principal preoccupation of the press and of governments. The
effect produced by an event, a legislative proposal, a speech, is
without intermission what they require to know, and the task is
not easy, for nothing is more mobile and changeable than the
thought of crowds, and nothing more frequent than to see them
execrate to-day what they applauded yesterday.
This total absence of any sort of direction of opinion, and at
the same time the destruction of general beliefs, have had for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: age. All these Masterman had eminently displayed, and here he
was, ab agendo, at seventy-three; while Joseph, barely two years
younger, and in the most excellent preservation, had disgraced
himself through life by idleness and eccentricity. Embarked in
the leather trade, he had early wearied of business, for which he
was supposed to have small parts. A taste for general
information, not promptly checked, had soon begun to sap his
manhood. There is no passion more debilitating to the mind,
unless, perhaps, it be that itch of public speaking which it not
infrequently accompanies or begets. The two were conjoined in the
case of Joseph; the acute stage of this double malady, that in
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