| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: prevents him from carrying out his novels in the privacy of
his own heart. He does not yet know enough of the world and
men. His experience is incomplete. That stage-wardrobe and
scene-room that we call the memory is so ill provided, that he
can overtake few combinations and body out few stories, to his
own content, without some external aid. He is at the
experimental stage; he is not sure how one would feel in
certain circumstances; to make sure, he must come as near
trying it as his means permit. And so here is young heroism
with a wooden sword, and mothers practice their kind vocation
over a bit of jointed stick. It may be laughable enough just
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: clear day, with one line of light, definite as the cut of a sword.
The Provencal threw his arms round the trunk of one of the palm trees,
as though it were the body of a friend, and then, in the shelter of
the thin, straight shadow that the palm cast upon the granite, he
wept. Then sitting down he remained as he was, contemplating with
profound sadness the implacable scene, which was all he had to look
upon. He cried aloud, to measure the solitude. His voice, lost in the
hollows of the hill, sounded faintly, and aroused no echo--the echo
was in his own heart. The Provencal was twenty-two years old:--he
loaded his carbine.
"There'll be time enough," he said to himself, laying on the ground
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: "If you had been faithful to your mistress as well, if you had not
spied upon her and betrayed her to her husband, all this might not
have happened," continued the detective pitilessly, adding with a
bitter smile: "And it was not even a case of sinful love. Your
mistress had no such relations with this Winkler as you - I say
this to excuse you - seemed to believe."
Adele Bernauer sprang up. "I do not need this excuse," she cried,
trembling in excitement. "I do not need any excuse. What I have
done I did after due consideration and in the realisation that it
was absolutely necessary to do it. Never for one moment did I
believe that my mistress was untrue to her husband. Never for one
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