| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: cloth as the Boys' Dress jackets, trimmed with blue satin
ribbons; the hat or Bonnet, Mr. Spittal said, was a Parisian
slouch, and had a plume of three white feathers.' But all
this leaves a blank impression, and it is rather by reading
backward in these old musty letters, which have moved me now
to laughter and now to impatience, that I glean occasional
glimpses of how she seemed to her contemporaries, and trace
(at work in her queer world of godly and grateful parasites) a
mobile and responsive nature. Fashion moulds us, and
particularly women, deeper than we sometimes think; but a
little while ago, and, in some circles, women stood or fell by
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: a group of mud-coloured huts from which a black muddy road ran
down in an irregular streak through the white field. That was
Pestrovo, concerning which my anonymous correspondent had written
to me. If it had not been for the crows who, foreseeing rain or
snowy weather, floated cawing over the pond and the fields, and
the tapping in the carpenter's shed, this bit of the world about
which such a fuss was being made would have seemed like the Dead
Sea; it was all so still, motionless, lifeless, and dreary!
My uneasiness hindered me from working and concentrating myself;
I did not know what it was, and chose to believe it was
disappointment. I had actually given up my post in the Department
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: the neighborhood of Paris, a perfect Versailles, a family estate of
which he bears the name. Don't you know Monsieur Moreau?"
"The steward of Presles?"
"Yes. Monsieur le Comte is going down to spend a couple of days with
him."
"Ha! then I'm to carry Monsieur le Comte de Serizy!" cried the coach-
proprietor.
"Yes, my land, neither more nor less. But listen! here's a special
order. If you have any of the country neighbors in your coach you are
not to call him Monsieur le comte; he wants to travel 'en cognito,'
and told me to be sure to say he would pay a handsome pourboire if he
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