| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: my discretion, and they often talk freely before me, being sure of my
silence. Well, robbery and murder on the high-road seem to me merciful
compared to some of their financial schemes. Nucingen and he no more
mind destroying a man than if he were an animal. Often I am told to
receive poor dupes whose fate I have heard them talk of the night
before,--men who rush into some business where they are certain to
lose their all. I am tempted, like Leonardo in the brigand's cave, to
cry out, 'Beware!' But if I did, what would become of me? So I keep
silence. This splendid house is a cut-throat's den! But Ferdinand and
Nucingen will lavish millions for their own caprices. Ferdinand is now
buying from the other du Tillet family the site of their old castle;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: "Well, gentlemen, when I heard that I must end my days in that
galley, I was for awhile like a madman: but in a day or two there
came over me, I know not how, a full assurance of salvation, both
for this life and the life to come, such as I had never had before;
and it was revealed to me (I speak the truth, gentlemen, before
Heaven) that now I had been tried to the uttermost, and that my
deliverance was at hand.
"And all the way up to Panama (that was after we had laden the
'Cacafuogo') I cast in my mind how to escape, and found no way: but
just as I was beginning to lose heart again, a door was opened by
the Lord's own hand; for (I know not why) we were marched across
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: two days before, and seemed now so intolerable that she had left the
family party, and come out here to consider it by herself. It was not
she who thought herself unhappy, but her cousins, who thought it for
her. The house was full of cousins, much of her age, or even younger,
and among them they had some terribly bright eyes. They seemed always
on the search for something between her and Rodney, which they
expected to find, and yet did not find; and when they searched,
Katharine became aware of wanting what she had not been conscious of
wanting in London, alone with William and her parents. Or, if she did
not want it, she missed it. And this state of mind depressed her,
because she had been accustomed always to give complete satisfaction,
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