The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: countess insisted on seeing Origet,--Origet, who had managed his case
so ill, was now killing his wife. If this disease was, as they said,
the result of excessive grief, surely he was the one who had been in a
condition to have it. What griefs could the countess have had? She was
always happy; she had never had troubles or annoyances. Their fortune,
thanks to his care and to his sound ideas, was now in a most
satisfactory state; he had always allowed Madame de Mortsauf to reign
at Clochegourde; her children, well trained and now in health, gave
her no anxiety,--where, then, did this grief they talked of come from?
Thus he argued and discussed the matter, mingling his expressions of
despair with senseless accusations. Then, recalled by some sudden
 The Lily of the Valley |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: communications the plain, human features of the man shone on me
convincingly. These gave me what knowledge I possess; and I learnt
it in that scene where it could be most completely and sensitively
understood - Kalawao, which you have never visited, about which you
have never so much as endeavoured to inform yourself; for, brief as
your letter is, you have found the means to stumble into that
confession. "LESS THAN ONE-HALF of the island," you say, "is
devoted to the lepers." Molokai - "MOLOKAI AHINA," the "grey,"
lofty, and most desolate island - along all its northern side
plunges a front of precipice into a sea of unusual profundity.
This range of cliff is, from east to west, the true end and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: Though by the tenour of our strict edict,
Your exposition misinterpreting,
We might proceed to cancel of your days;
Yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree
As your fair self, doth tune us otherwise:
Forty days longer we do respite you;
If by which time our secret be undone,
This mercy shows we'll joy in such a son:
And until then your entertain shall be
As doth befit our honour and your worth.
[Exeunt all but Pericles.]
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