| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,
As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse.
Marriage is a matter of more worth
Than to be dealt in by attorneyship;
Not whom we will; but whom his grace affects,
Must be companion of his nuptial bed:
And therefore, lords, since he affects her most,
It most of all these reasons bindeth us,
In our opinions she should be preferr'd.
For what is wedlock forced but a hell,
An age of discord and continual strife?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: their faces, the innate something that told of careful training from
the cradle? They seemed as if they had never shed tears nor wailed
like other children. Their mother knew, as it were, by electrically
swift intuition, the desires and the pains which she anticipated and
relieved. She seemed to dread a complaint from one of them more than
the loss of her soul. Everything in her children did honor to their
mother's training. Their threefold life, seemingly one life, called up
vague, fond thoughts; it was like a vision of the dreamed-of bliss of
a better world. And the three, so attuned to each other, lived in
truth such a life as one might picture for them at first sight--the
ordered, simple, and regular life best suited for a child's education.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: sheep were penned at night, about one hundred and fifty of the former
and some two thousand of the latter, to say nothing of the horses, for
he was a large and prosperous farmer, there arose a sound of bellowing,
neighing, and baaing, and with it that of the shouting of men.
"They are driving off the stock," said Marie. "Oh! my poor father, he
is ruined; it will break his heart."
"Bad enough," I answered, "but there are things that might be worse.
Hark!"
As I spoke there came a sound of stamping feet and of a wild war chant.
Then in the edge of the mist that hung above the hollow where the cattle
kraals were, figures appeared, moving swiftly to and fro, looking
Marie |
