| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: to the Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped the hilt
of my broken sword so hard, that they could only have taken it from me
by cutting off my hand at the wrist. A curious chance, or rather the
instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the
blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They
tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can
recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I
shammed illness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just
outside my cell. I thought to make my escape by boring a hole through
the wall and swimming for my life. I based my hopes on the following
reasons.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: "A body would think there was something in this," said the
missionary. "But if these tales are true, I wonder what about my
tales!"
Now the flaming of Akaanga's torch drew near in the night; and the
misshapen hands groped in the meshes of the net; and they took the
missionary between the finger and the thumb, and bore him dripping
in the night and silence to the place of the ovens of Miru. And
there was Miru, ruddy in the glow of the ovens; and there sat her
four daughters, and made the kava of the dead; and there sat the
comers out of the islands of the living, dripping and lamenting.
This was a dread place to reach for any of the sons of men. But of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: house, he made his way to the little office adjoining the shop on the
first floor. Daylight came in through a window, fortified by iron
bars, and looking out on a small yard surrounded by such black walls
that it was very like a well. The old merchant opened the iron-lined
shutters, which were so familiar to him, and threw up the lower half
of the sash window. The icy air of the courtyard came in to cool the
hot atmosphere of the little room, full of the odor peculiar to
offices.
The merchant remained standing, his hand resting on the greasy arm of
a large cane chair lined with morocco, of which the original hue had
disappeared; he seemed to hesitate as to seating himself. He looked
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