| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: provided there is somebody to look at one.
LADY MARKBY. Well, I hear the curate is always prowling about the
house.
MRS. CHEVELEY. I am afraid I am not fond of girl friends.
LADY CHILTERN [Rising.] Oh, I hope Mrs. Cheveley will stay here a
little. I should like to have a few minutes' conversation with her.
MRS. CHEVELEY. How very kind of you, Lady Chiltern! Believe me,
nothing would give me greater pleasure.
LADY MARKBY. Ah! no doubt you both have many pleasant reminiscences
of your schooldays to talk over together. Good-bye, dear Gertrude!
Shall I see you at Lady Bonar's to-night? She has discovered a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again,
when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things:
among others, trying to study out why the animals called lions and
tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of
teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each
other. This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each
other, and that would introduce what, as I understand it, is called
"death;" and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the
Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts.
Sunday
Pulled through.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: before each chair, that visitors might not soil the red-tiled floor
while they sat there; after which she returned to her cushioned
armchair and little work-table placed beneath the portrait of the
lieutenant-colonel of artillery between two windows,--a point from
which her eye could rake the rue du Bercail and see all comers. She
was a good woman, dressed with bourgeois simplicity in keeping with
her wan face furrowed by grief. The rigorous humbleness of poverty
made itself felt in all the accessories of this household, the very
air of which was charged with the stern and upright morals of the
provinces. At this moment the son and mother were together in the
dining-room, where they were breakfasting with a cup of coffee, with
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