| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: seated. I am told that you are an admiral,' he added.
'No sir, I am not an admiral,' returned Van Tromp, who now
began to grow nettled and enter into the spirit of the
interview.
'Then why do you call yourself one, sir?'
'I have to ask your pardon, I do not,' says Van Tromp, as
grand as the Pope.
But nothing was of avail against the Squire.
'You sail under false colours from beginning to end,' he
said. 'Your very house was taken under a sham name.'
'It is not my house. I am my daughter's guest,' replied the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: are men of genius only in the eyes of fools. If talent is to be
measured by youthful shyness, by that indefinable modesty which men
born to glory lose in the practice of their art, as a pretty woman
loses hers among the artifices of coquetry, then this unknown young
man might claim to be possessed of genuine merit. The habit of success
lessens doubt; and modesty, perhaps, is doubt.
Worn down with poverty and discouragement, and dismayed at this moment
by his own presumption, the young neophyte might not have dared to
enter the presence of the master to whom we owe our admirable portrait
of Henry IV., if chance had not thrown an unexpected assistance in his
way. An old man mounted the spiral stairway. The oddity of his dress,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: delighted to see his wishes fulfilled; he laughed and scolded, he
looked at his barrel, at his horse, and wiped away a tear, as he
said, 'It is too bad. What a splendid barrel! You really ought
not. Why, that horse is as strong as an Auvergnat!'
"I never saw a more touching scene. Bourgeat insisted on buying
for me the case of instruments mounted in silver which you have
seen in my room, and which is to me the most precious thing
there. Though enchanted with my first success, never did the
least sign, the least word, escape him which might imply, 'This
man owes all to me!' And yet, but for him, I should have died of
want; he had eaten bread rubbed with garlic that I might have
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