| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: approve the revival you are proposing to make of them.
Nevertheless, as we should always serve a friend according to his
wishes, not our own, I have done your commission relating to Monsieur
Dorlange, the sculptor, but I must tell you frankly that he showed no
eagerness to enter into your wishes. His first remark, when I
announced myself as coming from you, was that he did not know you; and
this reply, singular as it may seem to you, was made so naturally that
at first I thought there must be some mistake, the result, possibly,
of confusion of name. However, before long your oblivious friend was
willing to agree that he studied with you at the college of Tours and
also that hew as the same Monsieur Dorlange who, in 1831 and under
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: "You are jesting with me. There is nothing in my life
that you do not know. What is the secret?"
"Nothing more than the wish to have one. You are growing
tired of your bargain. The play wearies you. That is
foolish. Do you want to try a new part?"
The question was like a mirror upon which one comes
suddenly in a half-lighted room. A quick illumination falls on
it, and the passer-by is startled by the look of his own face.
"You are right," said Hermas. "I am tired. We have been
going on stupidly in this house, as if nothing were possible
but what my father had done before me. There is nothing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: still pacing to and fro like a wild animal in a menagerie.
Towards evening they passed Diamond Head, and came to the pier of
Honolulu. Keawe stepped out among the crowd and began to ask for
Lopaka. It seemed he had become the owner of a schooner - none
better in the islands - and was gone upon an adventure as far as
Pola-Pola or Kahiki; so there was no help to be looked for from
Lopaka. Keawe called to mind a friend of his, a lawyer in the town
(I must not tell his name), and inquired of him. They said he was
grown suddenly rich, and had a fine new house upon Waikiki shore;
and this put a thought in Keawe's head, and he called a hack and
drove to the lawyer's house. .
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