| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: replies in the towns and in the rural regions. Imagination could not
desire any other sort of dwelling for the prince who reigned over
France in the sixteenth century. The richness of seignorial garments,
the luxury of female adornment, must have harmonized delightfully with
the lace-work of these stones so wonderfully manipulated. From floor
to floor, as the king of France went up the marvellous staircase of
his chateau of Blois, he could see the broad expanse of the beautiful
Loire, which brought him news of all his kingdom as it lay on either
side of the great river, two halves of a State facing each other, and
semi-rivals. If, instead of building Chambord in a barren, gloomy
plain two leagues away, Francois I. had placed it where, seventy years
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: aloud, and the Earth seemed to them like a flower of silver, and
the Moon like a flower of gold.
Yet, after that they had laughed they became sad, for they
remembered their poverty, and one of them said to the other, 'Why
did we make merry, seeing that life is for the rich, and not for
such as we are? Better that we had died of cold in the forest, or
that some wild beast had fallen upon us and slain us.'
'Truly,' answered his companion, 'much is given to some, and little
is given to others. Injustice has parcelled out the world, nor is
there equal division of aught save of sorrow.'
But as they were bewailing their misery to each other this strange
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: fever-crazed lunatic come some time to a limit. What is this talk
about heads and baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that
absurd cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?" he ended,
with the silky cajolery that one would use toward a fretful child.
"Listen," said I. "At last you have struck upon the right note. What
would she think of me? Listen," I repeated.
"There are women," I said, "who look upon horsehair sofas and currant
wine as dross. To them even the calculated modulation of your well-
trimmed talk sounds like the dropping of rotten plums from a tree in
the night. They are the maidens who walk back and forth in the
villages, scorning the emptiness of the baskets at the doors of the
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