| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: bridled to their bland flirtation and casually kissed them at the end of each
dance. Babbitt hated her, for the moment. He saw her as middle-aged. He
studied the wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the slack flesh beneath
her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose and drooping. Between
dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her cigarette, summoning her
callow admirers to come and talk to her. ("She thinks she's a blooming queen!"
growled Babbitt.) She chanted to Miss Sonntag, "Isn't my little studio sweet?"
("Studio, rats! It's a plain old-maid-and-chow-dog flat! Oh, God, I wish I
was home! I wonder if I can't make a getaway now?")
His vision grew blurred, however, as he applied himself to Healey Hanson's raw
but vigorous whisky. He blended with the Bunch. He began to rejoice that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: request you to leave it, and too gallant--in the old-fashioned sense
of the word," she added with a slight tone of irony--"not to agree
that you have no right to question me. It would be ridiculous in me to
defend myself. I trust that you will have a sufficiently good opinion
of my character to believe in the profound contempt which, I assure
you, I feel for money,--although I was married, without any fortune,
to a man of immense wealth. It is nothing to me whether your nephew is
rich or poor; if I have received him in my house, and do now receive
him, it is because I consider him worthy to be counted among my
friends. All my friends, monsieur, respect each other; they know that
I have not philosophy enough to admit into my house those I do not
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: up to it, you plod on like beasts of burden, thinking only of the
day and its pain--yet is there a man among you who can believe
that such a system will continue forever--is there a man here in
this audience tonight so hardened and debased that he dare rise
up before me and say that he believes it can continue forever;
that the product of the labor of society, the means of existence
of the human race, will always belong to idlers and parasites, to
be spent for the gratification of vanity and lust--to be spent
for any purpose whatever, to be at the disposal of any individual
will whatever--that somehow, somewhere, the labor of humanity
will not belong to humanity, to be used for the purposes of
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