| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: Bonaparte became First Consul he found Fouche at the head of the
police. The Revolution had frankly and with good reason made the
management of the police into a special ministry. But after his return
from Marengo, Bonaparte created the prefecture of police, placed
Dubois in charge of it, and called Fouche to the Council of State,
naming as his successor in the ministry a conventional named Cochon,
since known as Comte de Lapparent. Fouche, who considered the ministry
of police as by far the most important in a government of broad ideas
and fixed policy, saw disgrace or at any rate distrust in the change.
After Napoleon became aware of the immense superiority of this great
statesman, as evidenced in the affair of the infernal machine and in
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: first met (it were well to mark this point), he wandered into my
camp when I thought myself a thousand miles beyond the outermost
post of civilization. At the sight of his human face, the first in
weary months, I could have sprung forward and folded him in my arms
(and I am not by any means a demonstrative man); but to him his
visit seemed the most casual thing under the sun. He just strolled
into the light of my camp, passed the time of day after the custom
of men on beaten trails, threw my snowshoes the one way and a
couple of dogs the other, and so made room for himself by the fire.
Said he'd just dropped in to borrow a pinch of soda and to see if I
had any decent tobacco. He plucked forth an ancient pipe, loaded
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: high, cold ante-chamber floored with brick. He heard her wooden
pattens click down an interminable corridor, and after some delay
she returned and told him to follow her.
They passed through a long saloon, bare as the ante-chamber, but
loftily vaulted, and frescoed with a seventeenth-century Triumph
of Scipio or Alexander--martial figures following Wyant with the
filmed melancholy gaze of shades in limbo. At the end of this
apartment he was admitted to a smaller room, with the same
atmosphere of mortal cold, but showing more obvious signs of
occupancy. The walls were covered with tapestry which had faded
to the gray-brown tints of decaying vegetation, so that the young
|
