| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: Encyclopaedic period broadcast in the boy's mind. He told wicked
anecdotes of the reign of His Majesty Louis XV.; he glorified the
manners and customs of the year 1750; he told of the orgies in petites
maisons, the follies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on
creditors, the manners, in short, which furnished forth Dancourt's
comedies and Beaumarchais' epigrams. And unfortunately, the corruption
lurking beneath the utmost polish tricked itself out in Voltairean
wit. If the Chevalier went rather too far at times, he always added as
a corrective that a man must always behave himself like a gentleman.
Of all this discourse, Victurnien comprehended just so much as
flattered his passions. From the first he saw his old father laughing
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Saxon bade God speed him, and on they moved
through a wide glade of the forest.
They had scarce departed, ere a sudden procession
moved from under the greenwood branches,
swept slowly round the silvan amphitheatre, and
took the same direction with Rowena and her followers.
The priests of a neighbouring convent, in
expectation of the ample donation, or _soul-scat_,
which Cedric had propined, attended upon the car
in which the body of Athelstane was laid, and sang
hymns as it was sadly and slowly borne on the
Ivanhoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: "And who is this Jack Ryan?" asked James Starr.
"An old mining comrade," replied Harry. Then leaning from
the platform, "Halloo! Jack!" he shouted.
"Is that you, Harry?" was the reply. "Wait a bit, I'm coming."
And the song broke forth again.
In a few minutes, a tall fellow of five and twenty, with a
merry face, smiling eyes, a laughing mouth, and sandy hair,
appeared at the bottom of the luminous cone which was thrown from
his lantern, and set foot on the landing of the fifteenth ladder.
His first act was to vigorously wring the hand which Harry
extended to him.
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