| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: exclaimed: `Perfidious Manon! perfidious, perfidious creature!'
She had no wish, she repeated with a flood of tears, to attempt
to justify her infidelity. `What is your wish, then?' cried I.
`I wish to die,' she answered, `if you will not give me back that
heart, without which it is impossible to endure life.' `Take my
life too, then, faithless girl!' I exclaimed, in vain
endeavouring to restrain my tears; `take my life also! it is the
sole sacrifice that remains for me to make, for my heart has
never ceased to be thine.'
"I had hardly uttered these words, when she rose in a transport
of joy, and approached to embrace me. She loaded me with a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: I have a friend in Peking who is also a friend of one of the
greatest Chinese officials. This official has gone into the
palace daily for a dozen years past and knows every plot and
counterplot that has been hatched in that nest of seclusion
during all that time, though he has been implicated in none of
them. He has held the highest positions in the gift of the empire
without ever once having been degraded. One day when he was in
the palace the Emperor unburdened his heart to him, thinking that
what he said would never reach the ears of his enemies.
"You have no idea," said the Emperor, "what I suffer here."
"Indeed?" was the only reply of the official.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: more than the most famous histrionic outpourings.
On the evening in question the little scene acquired
an added poignancy by reminding him--he could not
have said why--of his leave-taking from Madame
Olenska after their confidential talk a week or ten days
earlier.
It would have been as difficult to discover any
resemblance between the two situations as between the
appearance of the persons concerned. Newland Archer
could not pretend to anything approaching the young
English actor's romantic good looks, and Miss Dyas
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