| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: penalty might be paid to justice, both King and Queen accorded in
laying the whole blame on the agent Nectabanus, who (the Queen
being by this time well weary of the poor dwarf's humour) was,
with his royal consort Guenevra, sentenced to be banished from
the Court; and the unlucky dwarf only escaped a supplementary
whipping, from the Queen's assurances that he had already
sustained personal chastisement. It was decreed further that, as
an envoy was shortly to be dispatched to Saladin, acquainting him
with the resolution of the Council to resume hostilities so soon
as the truce was ended, and as Richard proposed to send a
valuable present to the Soldan, in acknowledgment of the high
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: never gotten any farther than Salt Lake City, wandered here and
there as helper, teamster, shepherd, and drifted southward over
the divide and across the barrens and up the rugged plateau
through the passes to the last border settlements. Here he became
a rider of the sage, had stock of his own, and for a time
prospered, until chance threw him in the employ of Jane
Withersteen.
"Lassiter, I needn't tell you the rest."
"Well, it'd be no news to me. I know Mormons. I've seen their
women's strange love en' patience en' sacrifice an' silence en'
whet I call madness for their idea of God. An' over against that
 Riders of the Purple Sage |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: tells of such poor hearts, oppressed by beings placed about them to
promote the development of their natures, would contain the true
history of my childhood.
What vanity could I have wounded,--I a child new-born? What moral or
physical infirmity caused by mother's coldness? Was I the child of
duty, whose birth is a mere chance, or was I one whose very life was a
reproach? Put to nurse in the country and forgotten by my family for
over three years, I was treated with such indifference on my return to
the parental roof that even the servants pitied me. I do not know to
what feeling or happy accident I owed my rescue from this first
neglect; as a child I was ignorant of it, as a man I have not
 The Lily of the Valley |