| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: quaint French picture of the Creation,--an engraving which
represented a shoreless sea under a black sky, and out of the
blackness a solemn and bearded gray head emerging, and a cloudy
hand through which stars glimmered. God was like old Doctor de
Coulanges, who used to visit the house, and talk in a voice like
a low roll of thunder.... At a later day, when Chita had been
told that God was "everywhere at the same time "--without and
within, beneath and above all things,--this idea became somewhat
changed. The awful bearded face, the huge shadowy hand, did not
fade from her thought; but they became fantastically blended with
the larger and vaguer notion of something that filled the world
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac: the countenance of the money-lender recalled to business.
"My dear fellow," said Vauvinet, looking at Bixiou, "I should
certainly oblige you with the greatest pleasure, but I haven't any
money to loan at the present time."
"Ah, bah!"
"No; I have given all I had to--you know who. That poor Lousteau went
into partnership for the management of a theatre with an old
vaudevillist who has great influence with the ministry, Ridal; and
they came to me yesterday for thirty thousand francs. I'm cleaned out,
and so completely that I was just in the act of sending to Cerizet for
a hundred louis, when I lost at lansquenet this morning, at Jenny
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: each of which was not intended to go home, but simply to play the
opponent's blade into a line that must open him ultimately, and as
predetermined, for an irresistible lunge. Each counter of the
opponent's would have to be preconsidered in this widening of his
guard, a widening so gradual that he should himself be unconscious
of it, and throughout intent upon getting home his own point on
one of those counters.
Andre-Louis had been in his time a chess-player of some force, and
at chess he had excelled by virtue of his capacity for thinking
ahead. That virtue applied to fencing should all but revolutionize
the art. It was so applied already, of course, but only in an
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