| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: write it down a vice of blood, O printers of New England!
The dinner, perhaps, was fresher and heartier after that. Then
Knowles went back to town; and in the middle of the afternoon, as
it grew dusk, Lois started, knowing how many would come into her
little shanty in the evening to wish her Happy Christmas,
although it was over. They piled up comforts and blankets in the
cart, and she lay on them quite snugly, her scarred child's-face
looking out from a great woollen hood Mrs. Howth gave her. Old
Yare held Barney, with his hat in his hand, looking as if he
deserved hanging, but very proud of the kindness they all showed
his girl. Holmes gave him some money for a Christmas gift, and
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: and nineteen rebellions. Wherefore instead of making for peace, it
makes against it, and destroys the very foundation it seems to stand on.
The contest for monarchy and succession, between the houses of York
and Lancaster, laid England in a scene of blood for many years.
Twelve pitched battles, besides skirmishes and sieges, were fought between
Henry and Edward. Twice was Henry prisoner to Edward, who in his turn
was prisoner to Henry. And so uncertain is the fate of war and the
temper of a nation, when nothing but personal matters are the ground
of a quarrel, that Henry was taken in triumph from a prison to a palace,
and Edward obliged to fly from a palace to a foreign land; yet,
as sudden transitions of temper are seldom lasting, Henry in his turn
Common Sense |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: remain the same. I know cases of beautiful devotion, of sublime
sufferings, which lack the publicity--the glory, if you choose--which
formerly gave lustre to the errors of some women. But though one may
not have saved a King of France, one is not the less an Agnes Sorel.
Do you believe that our dear Marquise d'Espard is not the peer of
Madame Doublet, or Madame du Deffant, in whose rooms so much evil was
spoken and done? Is not Taglioni a match for Camargo? or Malibran the
equal of Saint-Huberti? Are not our poets superior to those of the
eighteenth century? If at this moment, through the fault of the
Grocers who govern us, we have not a style of our own, had not the
Empire its distinguishing stamp as the age of Louis XV. had, and was
|
