| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: the good-humor, and the relative probity of these
illustrious recruits, to be certain that not one of them
would fail in his appointment. These orders given, this
rendezvous fixed, he went to bid farewell to Planchet, who
asked news of his army. D'Artagnan did not think proper to
inform him of the reduction he had made in his personnel. He
feared that the confidence of his associate would be abated
by such an avowal. Planchet was delighted to learn that the
army was levied, and that he (Planchet) found himself a kind
of half king, who from his throne-counter kept in pay a body
of troops destined to make war against perfidious Albion,
 Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: knew where it was. I found that paper in the water when I landed here
to-day. You gave a piece of Spanish gold this night to Mere Fleurant,
and your mother's piece is no longer in her bed. Explain all this.'
"Jacques said he had not taken his mother's money, and that the gold
piece was one he had brought from Nantes.
"'I am glad of it,' said Pierre; 'now prove it.'
"'I had it all along.'
"'You did not take the gold piece belonging to your mother?'
"'No.'
"'Will you swear it on your eternal life?'
"He was about to swear; his mother raised her eyes to him, and said:--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: did not very greatly alter the weapons and tactics of warfare,
the methods of agriculture, seamanship, their knowledge of the
habitable globe, or the devices and utensils of domestic life
between the days of the early Egyptians and the days when
Christopher Columbus was a child. Of course, there were
inventions and changes, but there were also retrogressions;
things were found out and then forgotten again; it was, on the
whole, a progress, but it contained no steps; the peasant life
was the same, there were already priests and lawyers and town
craftsmen and territorial lords and rulers doctors, wise women,
soldiers and sailors in Egypt and China and Assyria and
 The Last War: A World Set Free |