| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: he might have been taken for an Englishman on the road to his embassy.
From these general signs you will readily discern a family man,
harassed by vexations in his own household, worried by annoyances at
the ministry, yet philosopher enough to take life as he found it; an
honest man, loving his country and serving it, not concealing from
himself the obstacles in the way of those who seek to do right;
prudent, because he knew men; exquisitely courteous with women, of
whom he asked nothing,--a man full of acquirements, affable with his
inferiors, holding his equals at great distance, and dignified towards
his superiors. At the epoch of which we write, you would have noticed
in him the coldly resigned air of one who has buried the illusions of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: from a long way off and travelled post-haste, rather to your own
inconvenience, it is amusing, isn't it?"
"Wagons and carts in South Africa don't arrive like express
trains, Miss Marnham," said Anscombe, "so you shouldn't be
offended."
"I am not at all offended, Mr. Anscombe. Now that I know there
is nothing the matter with my father I'm--But, tell me, how did
you get your wound?"
So he told her with much amusing detail after his fashion. She
listened quietly with a puckered up brow and only made one
comment. It was,--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: surface until I was just going. Then I gathered that if he had
taken the post she would have felt compelled, compelled by all she
had done for him, to share its honours with him; and this, ever
since at her bidding he had begun to gather such things up, was
precisely what she had lost all inclination to do.
We were married the following October. We had a big, gorgeous
official wedding, which we both enjoyed enormously. I took
furlough, and we went home, but we found London very expensive and
the country very slow; and with my K.C.S.I. came the offer of the
Membership, so we went back to Simla for three perfectly unnecessary
years, which we now look back upon with pleasure and regret. I fear
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