| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: inverted human skull, into which a young Dionysus, smooth, brown
and sidelong as the St. John of the Louvre, poured a stream of
wine from a high-poised flagon. At the lady's feet lay the
symbols of art and luxury: a flute and a roll of music, a platter
heaped with grapes and roses, the torso of a Greek statuette, and
a bowl overflowing with coins and jewels; behind her, on the
chalky hilltop, hung the crucified Christ. A scroll in a corner
of the foreground bore the legend: Lux Mundi.
Wyant, emerging from the first plunge of wonder, turned
inquiringly toward his companions. Neither had moved. Miss
Lombard stood with her hand on the cord, her lids lowered, her
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: slenderness; her gloved hands, too, were shapely. There were flitting
patches of deep red in a pale face, which must have been fresh and
softly colored once. Premature wrinkles had withered the delicately
modeled forehead beneath the coronet of soft, well-set chestnut hair,
invariably wound about her head in two plaits, a girlish coiffure
which suited the melancholy face. There was a deceptive look of calm
in the dark eyes, with the hollow, shadowy circles about them;
sometimes, when she was off her guard, their expression told of secret
anguish. The oval of her face was somewhat long; but happiness and
health had perhaps filled and perfected the outlines. A forced smile,
full of quiet sadness, hovered continually on her pale lips; but when
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: long been the lawyer's eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer
and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom
the fanciful was the immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance
of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden
turn, it was his knowledge. It was already bad enough when the
name was but a name of which he could learn no more. It was worse
when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and
out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled
his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a
fiend.
"I thought it was madness," he said, as he replaced the
 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |