| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: rights, and enjoyments. Not only does this object of his hopes
appear to him of immense importance, but he is never sure of
reaching it till it is actually his own; the grade he fills is by
no means irrevocable; he is always entirely abandoned to the
arbitrary pleasure of his commanding officer, for this is
imperiously required by the necessity of discipline: a slight
fault, a whim, may always deprive him in an instant of the fruits
of many years of toil and endeavor; until he has reached the
grade to which he aspires he has accomplished nothing; not till
he reaches that grade does his career seem to begin. A desperate
ambition cannot fail to be kindled in a man thus incessantly
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: the studio, an air of happiness which bespoke in them a respectable
enthusiasm for Art.
"So it is you, monsieur, who are going to take our likenesses?" said
the father, assuming a jaunty air.
"Yes, monsieur," replied Grassou.
"Vervelle, he has the cross!" whispered the wife to the husband while
the painter's back was turned.
"Should I be likely to have our portraits painted by an artist who
wasn't decorated?" returned the former bottle-dealer.
Elie Magus here bowed to the Vervelle family and went away. Grassou
accompanied him to the landing.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: the guests at the table. The invention was due to Simon
Petrovitch, and was (if the truth must be confessed) the result of
certain carefully measured supplies of brandy which Prince Boris
himself had carried to the imprisoned poet.
After the sterlets had melted away to their backbones, and the
roasted geese had shrunk into drumsticks and breastplates, and here
and there a guest's ears began to redden with more rapid blood,
Prince Alexis judged that the time for diversion had arrived. He
first filled up the idiot's basin with fragments of all the dishes
within his reach,--fish, stewed fruits, goose fat, bread, boiled
cabbage, and beer,--the idiot grinning with delight all the while,
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