| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: In the largest teepee sat a young mother wrapping red
porcupine quills about the long fringes of a buckskin cushion.
Beside her lay a black-eyed baby boy cooing and laughing. Reaching
and kicking upward with his tiny hands and feet, he played with the
dangling strings of his heavy-beaded bonnet hanging empty on a tent
pole above him.
At length the mother laid aside her red quills and white
sinew-threads. The babe fell fast asleep. Leaning on one hand and
softly whispering a little lullaby, she threw a light cover over
her baby. It was almost time for the return of her husband.
Remembering there were no willow sticks for the fire, she
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: of a pair of high-heeled shoes, as if a woman were walking in the
apartment. Ere I could draw the curtain to see what the matter
was, the figure of a little woman passed between the bed and the
fire. The back of this form was turned to me, and I could
observe, from the shoulders and neck, it was that of an old
woman, whose dress was an old-fashioned gown, which I think
ladies call a sacque--that is, a sort of robe completely loose in
the body, but gathered into broad plaits upon the neck and
shoulders, which fall down to the ground, and terminate in a
species of train.
"I thought the intrusion singular enough, but never harboured for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: handle of a machine, at which hard drudgery she earned five-pence. Her
husband, a cabinetmaker, made four francs a day at his trade; but as
they had three children, it was all that they could do to gain an
honest living. Yet I have never met with more sterling honesty than in
this man and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere
Vaillant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and some
oranges for me--she that had never a sixpence to put by! Want had
drawn us together. I never could give her more than a ten-franc piece,
and often I had to borrow the money for the occasion. This will
perhaps explain my promise to go to the wedding; I hoped to efface
myself in these poor people's merry-making.
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