The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: secretly caballed against Bonaparte until Marengo. If it had not been
for Kellermann's charge and Desaix's death, du Bousquier would
probably have become a minister. He was one of the chief assistances
of that secret government whom Napoleon's luck send behind the scenes
in 1793. (See "An Historical Mystery.") The unexpected victory of
Marengo was the defeat of that party who actually had their
proclamations printed to return to the principles of the Montagne in
case the First Consul succumbed.
Convinced of the impossibility of Bonaparte's triumph, du Bousquier
staked the greater part of his property on a fall in the Funds, and
kept two couriers on the field of battle. The first started for Paris
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: His genius is a flame that he must hold
So far above the common heads of men
That they may view him only through the mist
Of their defect, and wonder what he is.
It seems to me the mystery that is in him
That makes him only more to me a man
Than any other I have ever known.
BURR
I grant you that his worship is a man.
I'm not so much at home with mysteries,
May be, as you -- so leave him with his fire:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: Why then should Yuan Shih-kai have been made the scapegoat of the
court and the officials, and branded as a murderer in the face of
the whole world? That may be another plot. The radical reformers,
followers of Kang Yu-wei, have been making such a hubbub about
the matter ever since the death of the Emperor and the Empress
Dowager that somebody had to be punished. They said that Yuan had
been a traitor to the cause of reform, that he had not only
betrayed his sovereign in 1898, but that now he had encompassed
his death.
Now to satisfy these enemies, the Prince Regent may have decided
that the best thing to do was to dismiss Yuan for a time. I think
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