| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: contrasts. They've been able to lay the butter so thick on every
exquisite mouthful."
The butter had certainly been laid on thick at Lyng: the old gray
house, hidden under a shoulder of the downs, had almost all the
finer marks of commerce with a protracted past. The mere fact
that it was neither large nor exceptional made it, to the Boynes,
abound the more richly in its special sense--the sense of having
been for centuries a deep, dim reservoir of life. The life had
probably not been of the most vivid order: for long periods, no
doubt, it had fallen as noiselessly into the past as the quiet
drizzle of autumn fell, hour after hour, into the green fish-pond
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: to a consciousness of good health. For the rest, he was a man of the
world, somewhat methodical and ceremonious, and a calculator of
consequences, who could make a declaration of love as quietly as a
lackey announces that "Madame is served."
This brief biographical notice of his lordship the Marquis de
Beauseant is given to explain the reasons why it was impossible for
the Marquise to marry M. de Nueil.
So, after a nine years' lease of happiness, the sweetest agreement to
which a woman ever put her hand, M. de Nueil and Mme. de Beauseant
were still in a position quite as natural and quite as false as at the
beginning of their adventure. And yet they had reached a fatal crisis,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: overturning Philip, and driving him out of Spain.
Some of these predictions are already fulfilled; and it is highly
probable the rest may be in due time; and, I think, I have not
forced the words, by my explication, into any other sense than
what they will naturally bear. If this be granted, I am sure it
must be also allow'd, that the author (whoever he were) was a
person of extraordinary sagacity; and that astrology brought to
such perfection as this, is by no means an art to be despised,
whatever Mr. Bickerstaff, or other merry gentlemen are pleased to
think. As to the tradition of these lines having been writ in the
original by Merlin, I confess I lay not much weight upon it: But
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