| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: and alarm that her sister, Lady Bothwell, heard her express a
resolution to visit this man of art, and learn from him the fate
of her husband. Lady Bothwell remonstrated on the improbability
that such pretensions as those of this foreigner could be founded
in anything but imposture.
"I care not," said the deserted wife, "what degree of ridicule I
may incur; if there be any one chance out of a hundred that I may
obtain some certainty of my husband's fate, I would not miss that
chance for whatever else the world can offer me."
Lady Bothwell next urged the unlawfulness of resorting to such
sources of forbidden knowledge.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: drag about our fetter?"
"My dear boy," said his uncle, the catechist, "do not complain
about your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth
living. None are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that
are not gyved like us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very
dangerous talk. If you grumble of your iron, you will have no
luck; if ever you take it off, you will be instantly smitten by a
thunderbolt."
"Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers?" asked Jack.
"Jupiter is longsuffering to the benighted," returned the
catechist.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: a moment the pointed roofs with their projecting eaves, the wooden
staircases, the galleries of a thousand peaceful dwellings, and the
vessels swaying to the waves in the port.
[At the moment when Monsieur Hermann uttered the name of Prosper
Magnan, my opposite neighbor seized the decanter, poured out a glass
of water, and emptied it at a draught. This movement having attracted
my attention, I thought I noticed a slight trembling of the hand and a
moisture on the brow of the capitalist.
"What is that man's name?" I asked my neighbor.
"Taillefer," she replied.
"Do you feel ill?" I said to him, observing that this strange
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