| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: him; then he remained, as his habit was, absorbed in somnolent
musings. The servant's custom was to make the fire and gently draw him
from his half sleep by the murmured sound of her movements,--a sort of
music which he loved. Twenty minutes passed and Marianne had not
appeared. The vicar, now half a canon, was about to ring again, when
he let go the bell-pull, hearing a man's step on the staircase. In a
minute more the Abbe Troubert, after discreetly knocking at the door,
obeyed Birotteau's invitation and entered the room. This visit, which
the two abbe's usually paid each other once a month, was no surprise
to the vicar. The canon at once exclaimed when he saw that Marianne
had not made the fire of his quasi-colleague. He opened the window and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: uniform, scratched mightily with great two-footed swoops that threw
the vegetable mould over Orde's very feet. Blazoned butterflies--
the yellow and black turnus, the dark troilus, the shade-loving
nymphalis--flickered in and out of the patches of sunlight. Orde
paid them no attention. The noon heat poured down through the
forest isles like an incense. Overhead swung the sun, and down the
slope until the long shafts of its light lifted wand-like across the
tree trunks.
At this hint of evening Orde shook himself and arose. He was little
nearer the readjustment he sought than he had been the previous
night.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: yet for the twentieth part of the English national debt,
could have a navy as large again. The navy of England is not worth,
at this time, more than three millions and an half sterling.
The first and second editions of this pamphlet were published without
the following calculations, which are now given as a proof that the
above estimation of the navy is just.
[See Entic's naval history, intro. page 56.]
The charge of building a ship of each rate, and furnishing her with masts,
yards, sails and rigging, together with a proportion of eight months
boatswain's and carpenter's seastores, as calculated by Mr. Burchett,
Secretary to the navy.
 Common Sense |