| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: diligent student of human nature will admit Desplein's exorbitant
pretensions, and believe--as he himself believed--that he might
have been no less great as a minister than he was as a surgeon.
Among the riddles which Desplein's life presents to many of his
contemporaries, we have chosen one of the most interesting,
because the answer is to be found at the end of the narrative,
and will avenge him for some foolish charges.
Of all the students in Desplein's hospital, Horace Bianchon was
one of those to whom he most warmly attached himself. Before
being a house surgeon at the Hotel-Dieu, Horace Bianchon had been
a medical student lodging in a squalid boarding house in the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: Even if, as of old, man should wander hungrily, sword in hand,
slaying and being slain, the relief would be only temporary. Even
if one race alone should hew down the last survivor of all the
other races, that one race, drifting the world around, would
saturate the planet with its own life and again press against
subsistence. And in that day, the death rate and the birth rate
will have to balance. Men will have to die, or be prevented from
being born. Undoubtedly a higher quality of life will obtain, and
also a slowly decreasing fecundity. But this decrease will be so
slow that the pressure against subsistence will remain. The
control of progeny will be one of the most important problems of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: or other, stopped at the sight of Reggie.
"You are not going out, Reginald?" she asked, seeing that he was.
"I'll be back for tea, mater," said Reggie weakly, plunging his hands into
his jacket pockets.
Snip. Off came a head. Reggie almost jumped.
"I should have thought you could have spared your mother your last
afternoon," said she.
Silence. The Pekes stared. They understood every word of the mater's.
Biddy lay down with her tongue poked out; she was so fat and glossy she
looked like a lump of half-melted toffee. But Chinny's porcelain eyes
gloomed at Reginald, and he sniffed faintly, as though the whole world were
|
