| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "Listen, my son," the dying man went on. "I am a great sinner.
All my life long, however, I have thought of my death. I was once
the friend of the great Pope Julius II.; and that illustrious
Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive excitability of my senses
should entangle me in mortal sin between the moment of my death
and the time of my anointing with the holy oil, gave me a flask
that contains a little of the holy water that once issued from
the rock in the wilderness. I have kept the secret of this
squandering of a treasure belonging to Holy Church, but I am
permitted to reveal the mystery in articulo mortis to my son. You
will find the flask in a drawer in that Gothic table that always
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: enough for a full mouth with a tender depression at the corners.
The nose is small, and the eyebrows are set rather high, far
apart, and as lightly pencilled as the eyebrows in a Chinese
painting. The forehead is high and serious, and the hair, which
one feels to be fine and thick and fair, drawn off it and lying
close like a cap. The eyes are neither large nor small, hazel
probably, with a look at once shy and steady. A pair of
beautiful long hands are crossed below the lady's breast. . .
The chaplain of Kerfol, and other witnesses, averred that when
the Baron came back from Locronan he jumped from his horse,
ordered another to be instantly saddled, called to a young page
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: for this world, as for the next; it is not against life; in short,
it is against death that I have fitted you out. And when you come
to die, you will give me news of my paint."
"Oh!" cried the young man, "I had not understood that, and it seems
a little disappointing. But there is no doubt all is for the best:
and in the meanwhile, I shall be obliged if you will help me to
undo the evil I have brought on innocent persons."
"That is none of my business," said the physician; "but if you will
go round the corner to the police office, I feel sure it will
afford you relief to give yourself up."
Six weeks later, the physician was called to the town gaol.
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