| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy,
First shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth
Her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray
With foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed,
And laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves,
Untended, will the she-goats then bring home
Their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield
Shall of the monstrous lion have no fear.
Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee
Caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die,
Die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: promptings of his heart for a whole week, and feeling himself
almost a criminal in this mental struggle, he called the same
evening on Madame de Rouville.
All his suspicions, all his evil thoughts vanished at the sight
of the young girl, who had grown pale and thin.
"Good heavens! what is the matter?" he asked her, after greeting
the Baroness.
Adelaide made no reply, but she gave him a look of deep
melancholy, a sad, dejected look, which pained him.
"You have, no doubt, been working hard," said the old lady. "You
are altered. We are the cause of your seclusion. That portrait
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a
canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find
myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some
contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier
to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a
comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely
elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a commonplace, that we
cannot answer for ourselves before we have been tried. But it is
not so common a reflection, and surely more consoling, that we
usually find ourselves a great deal braver and better than we
thought. I believe this is every one's experience: but an
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