| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: France?
You know the species; let us now take a look at the individual.
There lives in Paris an incomparable commercial traveller, the paragon
of his race, a man who possesses in the highest degree all the
qualifications necessary to the nature of his success. His speech is
vitriol and likewise glue,--glue to catch and entangle his victim and
make him sticky and easy to grip; vitriol to dissolve hard heads,
close fists, and closer calculations. His line was once the HAT; but
his talents and the art with which he snared the wariest provincial
had brought him such commercial celebrity that all vendors of the
"article Paris"[*] paid court to him, and humbly begged that he would
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: replying.
"Really, Ned," said the former, finally, "the answer to your
question involves the whole story."
"Then why not tell him the whole story, Enos?" remarked his wife.
"You know I've never told it yet, and it's rather a hard thing to
do, seeing that I'm one of the heroes of the farce--for it wasn't
even genteel comedy, Ned," said Mr. Billings. "However," he
continued, "absurd as the story may seem, it's the only key to the
change in my life, and I must run the risk of being laughed at."
"I'll help you through, Enos," said his wife, encouragingly; "and
besides, my role in the farce was no better than yours. Let us
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: into raptures; and this, of course, she mused, he had created
under her influence, and altogether, thanks to her influence, he
had greatly changed for the better. Her influence was so
beneficent and essential that if she were to leave him he might
perhaps go to ruin. And she remembered, too, that the last time
he had come to see her in a great-coat with flecks on it and a
new tie, he had asked her languidly:
"Am I beautiful?"
And with his elegance, his long curls, and his blue eyes, he
really was very beautiful (or perhaps it only seemed so), and he
had been affectionate to her.
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