| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: air and crossing all the green valley, sounded pleasant to my ear,
and seemed a thing rustic, like the oaks or the river.
A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the Tarn
at Pont de Montvert of bloody memory.
PONT DE MONTVERT
ONE of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert was, if I
remember rightly, the Protestant temple; but this was but the type
of other novelties. A subtle atmosphere distinguishes a town in
England from a town in France, or even in Scotland. At Carlisle
you can see you are in the one country; at Dumfries, thirty miles
away, you are as sure that you are in the other. I should find it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: soon as he could, and remaining where he was, worked hard at
whatever he found to do. Most of his creditors, knowing him to be
a man of his word, patiently bided their time, until, in the
course of long years, he paid, with interest, every cent of what
he used to call, in rueful satire upon his own folly, his
"National Debt."
III. LAWYER LINCOLN
Unlucky as Lincoln's attempt at storekeeping had been, it served
one good purpose. Indeed, in a way it may be said to have
determined his whole future career. He had had a hard struggle to
decide between becoming a blacksmith or a lawyer; and when chance
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: exalted strain; and, to describe his love, he displayed all the
treasures of eloquence--that sorcerer, that friendly interpreter, whom
women rarely refuse to believe. When the first rays of dawn surprised
the boon companions, some woman suggested that they go to Frascati.
One and all welcomed with loud applause the idea of passing the day at
Villa Ludovisi. Vitagliani went down to hire carriages. Sarrasine had
the good fortune to drive La Zambinella in a phaeton. When they had
left Rome behind, the merriment of the party, repressed for a moment
by the battle they had all been fighting against drowsiness, suddenly
awoke. All, men and women alike, seemed accustomed to that strange
life, that constant round of pleasures, that artistic energy, which
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