| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: Foster) he took off his hat to the father and de-
clared himself humbly. 'I daresay she's fool
enough to marry you,' was all Foster said. 'And
then,' he used to relate, 'he puts his hat on his head,
looks black at me as if he wanted to cut my throat,
whistles the dog, and off he goes, leaving me to do
the work.' The Fosters, of course, didn't like to
lose the wages the girl earned: Amy used to give all
her money to her mother. But there was in Foster
a very genuine aversion to that match. He con-
tended that the fellow was very good with sheep,
Amy Foster |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: paternal printing office, he came across an old school friend in the
direst poverty. Lucien Chardon, a young fellow of one-and-twenty or
thereabouts, was the son of a surgeon-major who had retired with a
wound from the republican army. Nature had meant M. Chardon senior for
a chemist; chance opened the way for a retail druggist's business in
Angouleme. After many years of scientific research, death cut him off
in the midst of his incompleted experiments, and the great discovery
that should have brought wealth to the family was never made. Chardon
had tried to find a specific for the gout. Gout is a rich man's
malady; the rich will pay large sums to recover health when they have
lost it, and for this reason the druggist deliberately selected gout
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: long as they are alive, and their talent leaves no trace when
they are gone. Actors and surgeons, like great singers too, like
the executants who by their performance increase the power of
music tenfold, are all the heroes of a moment.
Desplein is a case in proof of this resemblance in the destinies
of such transient genius. His name, yesterday so famous, to-day
almost forgotten, will survive in his special department without
crossing its limits. For must there not be some extraordinary
circumstances to exalt the name of a professor from the history
of Science to the general history of the human race? Had Desplein
that universal command of knowledge which makes a man the living
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