| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: baked mud or to pretend to seek for worms where no worms are. And they
leave the ancient mother quacking beside her pond and set out to seek for
new pastures--perhaps to lose themselves upon the way?--perhaps to find
them? To the old mother one is inclined to say, "Ah, good old mother duck,
can you not see the world has changed? You cannot bring the water back
into the dried-up pond! Mayhap it was better and pleasanter when it was
there, but it has gone for ever; and, would you and yours swim again, it
must be in other waters." New machinery, new duties.)
But it is not only, nor even mainly, in the sphere of women's material
domestic labours that change has touched her and shrunk her ancient field
of labour.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: pride and done Montcornet an ill turn; but, in spite of his habitual
keenness, he had not appreciated the irony underlying Madame de
Vaudremont's speech, and did not perceive that she had come as far to
meet his friend as his friend towards her, though both were
unconscious of it.
At that moment when the lawyer went fluttering up to the candelabrum
by which Madame de Soulanges sat, pale, timid, and apparently alive
only in her eyes, her husband came to the door of the ballroom, his
eyes flashing with anger. The old Duchess, watchful of everything,
flew to her nephew, begged him to give her his arm and find her
carriage, affecting to be mortally bored, and hoping thus to prevent a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: walking up and down, and wringing our hands, and we cannot tell how we came
there. So pass two years, as men reckon them.
V.
Then a new time.
Before us there were three courses possible--to go mad, to die, to sleep.
We take the latter course; or nature takes it for us.
All things take rest in sleep; the beasts, birds, the very flowers close
their eyes, and the streams are still in winter; all things take rest; then
why not the human reason also? So the questioning devil in us drops
asleep, and in that sleep a beautiful dream rises for us. Though you hear
all the dreams of men, you will hardly find a prettier one than ours. It
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