| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: so serves the turn of instruction. But the course of our
education is answered best by those poems and romances where
we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet
generous and pious characters. Shakespeare has served me
best. Few living friends have had upon me an influence so
strong for good as Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character,
already well beloved in the reading, I had the good fortune
to see, I must think, in an impressionable hour, played by
Mrs. Scott Siddons. Nothing has ever more moved, more
delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence quite
passed away. Kent's brief speech over the dying Lear had a
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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: Flower in the Indies. But in spite of a friendship dating from the
d'Aldriggers' first appearance at the Nucingens', Ferdinand did not
marry Malvina. Our ferocious friend was not apparently jealous of
Desroches, who paid assiduous court to the young lady; Desroches
wanted to pay off the rest of the purchase-money due for his
connection; Malvina could not well have less than fifty thousand
crowns, he thought, and so the lawyer was fain to play the lover.
Malvina, deeply humiliated as she was by du Tillet's carelessness,
loved him too well to shut the door upon him. With her, an
enthusiastic, highly-wrought, sensitive girl, love sometimes got the
better of pride, and pride again overcame wounded love. Our friend
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Baby Mine by Margaret Mayo: himself so. He sank mutely on the end of the couch and proceeded
to sulk in silence.
As for Aggie and Zoie, they continued to gaze open-mouthed at
Alfred, who was waltzing about the room transported into a new
heaven of delight at having snatched his heir from the danger of
another night ramble with Jimmy.
"Did a horrid old Jimmy spoil his 'itty nap'?" he gurgled to
Baby. Then with a sudden exclamation of alarm, he turned toward
the anxious women. "Aggie!" he cried, as he stared intently into
Baby's face. "Look--his rash! It's turned IN!"
Aggie pretended to glance over Alfred's shoulder.
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