| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: to result in a new era and splendid fortunes for France. He
strove to convince the families who frequented his drawing-room,
or those whom he visited, how few favorable openings would
henceforth be offered by a civil or military career. He urged
mothers to give their boys a start in independent and industrial
professions, explaining that military posts and high Government
appointments must at last pertain, in a quite constitutional
order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage. According
to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share in
practical government by its elective assembly, its appointments
to law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: Though slightly veiled by the thickened surface disease had laid
there, it shone with the mysterious brilliancy of a flower blooming
beneath the water of the sea when the sun is penetrating it. Veronique
was changed for a few moments; the Little Virgin reappeared and then
disappeared again, like a celestial vision. The pupils of her eyes,
gifted with the power of great expansion, widened until they covered
the whole surface of the blue iris except for a tiny circle. Thus the
metamorphose of the eye, which became as keen and vivid as that of an
eagle, completed the extraordinary change in the face. Was it the
storm of restrained passions; was it some power coming from the depths
of the soul, which enlarged the pupils in full daylight as they
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: Lopaka. It seemed he had become the owner of a schooner - none
better in the islands - and was gone upon an adventure as far as
Pola-Pola or Kahiki; so there was no help to be looked for from
Lopaka. Keawe called to mind a friend of his, a lawyer in the town
(I must not tell his name), and inquired of him. They said he was
grown suddenly rich, and had a fine new house upon Waikiki shore;
and this put a thought in Keawe's head, and he called a hack and
drove to the lawyer's house. .
The house was all brand new, and the trees in the garden no greater
than walking-sticks, and the lawyer, when he came, had the air of a
man well pleased.
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