| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: slumbers or snatch a kiss.
Yet home education is not without its drawbacks, to which I am fully
alive. Society, like nature, is a jealous power, and will have not her
rights encroached on, or her system set at naught. Thus, children who
are brought up at home are exposed too early to the fire of the world;
they see its passions and become at home with its subterfuges. The
finer distinctions, which regulate the conduct of matured men and
women, elude their perceptions, and they take feeling and passion for
their guide instead of subordinating those to the code of society;
whilst the gay trappings and tinsel which attract so much of the
world's favor blind them to the importance of the more sober virtues.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: the spring-house, Mrs. Biggs with her crocheting-bag hanging to
the handle of her umbrella. I opened the door, but they wouldn't
come in.
"We won't track up your clean floor, Minnie," Mrs. Biggs said--
she was a little woman, almost fifty, who'd gone through life
convinced she'd only lived so long by the care she took of
herself--"but I thought I'd better come and speak to you. Please
don't irritate Mr. Biggs to-day. He's been reading that article
of Upton Sinclair's about fasting, and hasn't had a bite to eat
since noon yesterday."
I noticed then that she looked pale. She was a nervous creature,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: view of the landscape. Marry Virginie, and have that beautiful villa
some day for his own!
He was received by the Vervelles with an enthusiasm, a joy, a
kindliness, a frank bourgeois absurdity which confounded him. It was
indeed a day of triumph. The prospective son-in-law was marched about
the grounds on the nankeen-colored paths, all raked as they should be
for the steps of so great a man. The trees themselves looked brushed
and combed, and the lawns had just been mown. The pure country air
wafted to the nostrils a most enticing smell of cooking. All things
about the mansion seemed to say:
"We have a great artist among us."
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