| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: "This," said Amyas, "is indeed the proudest day of my life! I have
lost one brother, but I have gained fourscore. God do so to me and
more also, if I do not deal with you according to the trust which
you have put in me this day!"
We, I suppose, are to believe that we have a right to laugh at
Amyas's scheme as frantic and chimerical. It is easy to amuse
ourselves with the premises, after the conclusion has been found
for us. We know, now, that he was mistaken: but we have not
discovered his mistake for ourselves, and have no right to plume
ourselves on other men's discoveries. Had we lived in Amyas's
days, we should have belonged either to the many wise men who
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: days' sight, with three witnesses and guarantees. He may seem
captious, wrong-headed, inconsequent, vacillating, and without any
fixed opinions; but let something serious turn up, some combination to
scheme out, he will not scatter himself like Blondet here, who chooses
these occasions to look at things from his neighbor's point of view.
Rastignac concentrates himself, pulls himself together, looks for the
point to carry by storm, and goes full tilt for it. He charges like a
Murat, breaks squares, pounds away at shareholders, promoters, and the
whole shop, and returns, when the breach is made, to his lazy,
careless life. Once more he becomes the man of the South, the man of
pleasure, the trifling, idle Rastignac. He has earned the right of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: in relation with Mrs. St. George. If it was a question of
introductions Miss Fancourt - apparently as yet unmarried - was far
away, while the wife of his illustrious confrere was almost between
them. This lady struck Paul Overt as altogether pretty, with a
surprising juvenility and a high smartness of aspect, something
that - he could scarcely have said why - served for mystification.
St. George certainly had every right to a charming wife, but he
himself would never have imagined the important little woman in the
aggressively Parisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of
a man of letters. That partner in general, he knew, that second
self, was far from presenting herself in a single type:
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