| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: shame and resolved to give battle at all costs to the attempt of
the Censorship to suppress the play. Third, the artistic spirit
of the actors, who made the play their own and carried it through
triumphantly in spite of a series of disappointments and
annoyances much more trying to the dramatic temperament than mere
difficulties.
The acting, too, required courage and character as well as skill
and intelligence. The veto of the Censor introduced quite a
novel element of moral responsibility into the undertaking. And
the characters were very unusual on the English stage. The
younger heroine is, like her mother, an Englishwoman to the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: of our burgher's names began in some such way.
This digression will explain, not only the long feud as to precedence
which the guild of drapers maintained for two centuries against the
guild of furriers and also of mercers (each claiming the right to walk
first, as being the most important guild in Paris), but it will also
serve to explain the importance of the Sieur Lecamus, a furrier
honored with the custom of two queens, Catherine de' Medici and Mary
Stuart, also the custom of the parliament,--a man who for twenty years
was the syndic of his corporation, and who lived in the street we have
just described.
The house of Lecamus was one of three which formed the three angles of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: "It is a great castle,--the summer residence of the Reigning Prince."
"Have you ever lived there?"
"I have stayed there," said the Baroness. Acton was silent;
he looked a while at the uncastled landscape before him.
"It is the first time you have ever asked me about Silberstadt,"
she said. "I should think you would want to know about my marriage;
it must seem to you very strange."
Acton looked at her a moment. "Now you would n't like me to say that!"
"You Americans have such odd ways!" the Baroness declared.
"You never ask anything outright; there seem to be so many
things you can't talk about."
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