| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Deputy of Arcis by Honore de Balzac: of the minister, she took her hand and pressed it to her lips with
charming grace.
After the dancing began, Nais was unable to accept all the invitations
which the elegant young lions vied with one another in pressing upon
her; in fact, she grew sadly confused as to the number and order of
her engagements,--a circumstance which very nearly led, in spite of
the /entente cordiale/, to an open rupture between France and
perfidious Albion. A quadrille doubly promised, to a young English
peer aged ten and a pupil in the Naval School of about the same years,
came very near producing unpleasant complications, inasmuch as the
young British scion of nobility had assumed a boxing attitude. That
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: well the sequence of events. He will discover that in times long gone
by during a period of peace vast wealth was stored up in the
acropolis, the whole of which was lavishly expended during a
subsequent period of war. He will perceive, if he examines closely,
that even at the present time we are suffering from its ill effects.
Countless sources of revenue have failed, or if they have still flowed
in, been lavishly expended on a multiplicity of things. Whereas,[20]
now that peace is established by sea, our revenues have expanded and
the citizens of Athens have it in their power to turn these to account
as they like best.
[19] Reading {epanoskopoin}.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: again you are the only woman of the sort that I can lay my hands
on."
In answer to this, Madame Zephyrine sighed, and appeared by a
gesture to resign herself, like one yielding to unqualified
authority.
That afternoon the observatory was finally blinded, a wardrobe
having been drawn in front of it upon the other side; and while
Silas was still lamenting over this misfortune, which he attributed
to the Britisher's malign suggestion, the concierge brought him up
a letter in a female handwriting. It was conceived in French of no
very rigorous orthography, bore no signature, and in the most
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