| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and perseverance.
All this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his whole character,
and like the unyielding Deity that follows the storm to check its
rage in the forest, he resolves for the first time to shake off
his embarrassment and return where he had before only worshiped.
At last we begin to get the Major's measure. We are able to put
this and that casual fact together, and build the man up before
our eyes, and look at him. And after we have got him built, we find
him worth the trouble. By the above comparison between his age
and Ambulinia's, we guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two;
and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: proportionately among them all./ That division, made under the eye of
a magistrate, is what we call a /contribution/. If you owe ten
thousand francs, and your creditors issue writs of attachment on a
debt due to you of a thousand francs, each one of them gets so much
per cent, 'so much in the pound,' in legal phrase; so much (that
means) in proportion to the amounts severally claimed by the
creditors. But--the creditors cannot touch the money without a special
order from the clerk of the court. Do you guess what all this work
drawn up by a judge and prepared by attorneys must mean? It means a
quantity of stamped paper full of diffuse lines and blanks, the
figures almost lost in vast spaces of completely empty ruled columns.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: an act of great unreason; for the debtor who stays away is but
the more remarked, and the boarder who misses a meal is sure
to be accused of infidelity. On the fourth day, therefore, I
returned, inwardly quaking. The proprietor looked askance
upon my entrance; the waitresses (who were his daughters)
neglected my wants and sniffed at the affected joviality of my
salutations; last and most plain, when I called for a suisse
(such as was being served to all the other diners) I was bluntly
told there were no more. It was obvious I was near the end of
my tether; one plank divided me from want, and now I felt it
tremble. I passed a sleepless night, and the first thing in the
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