| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: sister's innocent experiences that much of it was hardly
intelligible to her. Evelina's dreadful familiarity with it all,
her fluency about things which Ann Eliza half-guessed and quickly
shuddered back from, seemed even more alien and terrible than
the actual tale she told. It was one thing--and heaven knew
it was bad enough!--to learn that one's sister's husband was a
drug-fiend; it was another, and much worse thing, to learn from
that sister's pallid lips what vileness lay behind the word.
Evelina, unconscious of any distress but her own, sat upright,
shivering in Ann Eliza's hold, while she piled up, detail by
detail, her dreary narrative.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: to honorable causes.
"My dear," said the old lady to the young one, "I am cold; make a
little fire, and give me my shawl."
Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, where she no
doubt slept, and returned bringing her mother a cashmere shawl,
which when new must have been very costly; the pattern was
Indian; but it was old, faded and full of darns, and matched the
furniture. Madame Leseigneur wrapped herself in it very
artistically, and with the readiness of an old woman who wishes
to make her words seem truth. The young girl ran lightly off to
the lumber-room and reappeared with a bundle of small wood, which
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: girdles to the merchant." What have we done in all these thousands
of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian matron?
Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? Might
not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every
feeble breast fenced with sweet colours from the cold? What have we
done? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some
poor covering for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us,
and choke the air with fire, to turn our spinning-wheels--and,--ARE
WE YET CLOTHED? Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul
with sale of cast clouts and rotten rags? Is not the beauty of your
sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, with better
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