| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Bursting across the tangled math
A ruin that I called a path,
A Golgotha that, later on,
When rains had watered, and suns shone,
And seeds enriched the place, should bear
And be called garden. Here and there,
I spied and plucked by the green hair
A foe more resolute to live,
The toothed and killing sensitive.
He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;
He shrank and tucked his branches back;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: detective off the scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million
francs in London before the slightest suspicion has been aroused. My
debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will
put a 'P'* on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the
rest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. [*Protested.] I was alone with
him when he died, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall
slip into his skin. . . . Mille diables! the woman who is to follow
after me might give them a clue! Think of an old campaigner like me
infatuated enough to tie myself to a petticoat tail! . . . Why take
her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could make up my mind to it;
but--I know myself--I should be ass enough to go back to her. Still,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: buccaneers?
"Suppose they're the devil himself," said divers young politicians,
"they entertain mighty well."
"The Comte de Lanty may have plundered some /Casbah/ for all I care; I
would like to marry his daughter!" cried a philosopher.
Who would not have married Marianina, a girl of sixteen, whose beauty
realized the fabulous conceptions of Oriental poets! Like the Sultan's
daughter in the tale of the /Wonderful Lamp/, she should have remained
always veiled. Her singing obscured the imperfect talents of the
Malibrans, the Sontags, and the Fodors, in whom some one dominant
quality always mars the perfection of the whole; whereas Marianina
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