| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: arrived, he placed several good cigars upon it, and sent it in to
Muller. Taking a cigar himself, the commissioner leaned back in
his sofa corner to think over this first interesting case of his
short professional experience. That it concerned a lady in distress
made it all the more romantic.
In his little room the detective, put in good humour by the
thoughtful attention of his chief, sat down to read the book
carefully. While he studied its contents his mind went back over
his search in the silent street outside.
He and Amster had hurried out into the raw chill of the night,
reaching the spot of the first discovery in about ten or fifteen
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: feel it perhaps, and the nature of their mind supplies them with
a thousand devices to put an end to it. By questioning the young
man as to the material exercise of his art, and as to his
studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened him to talk. The
indefinable nothings of their chat, animated by kind feeling,
naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks or reflections
which showed the character of his habits and of his mind. Trouble
had prematurely faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, no
doubt; nothing was left but the more prominent features, the
outline, in a word, the skeleton of a countenance of which the
whole effect indicated great shrewdness with much grace in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: country where they did not belong, and which did not as yet belong to
them. Once again we heard their honk off to our left, from a farther
distance, and I am glad to say that we did not see them at all.
"If," said John Mayrant, "what you have said is true, the nation had
better get on its knees and pray God to give it grace."
I looked at the boy and saw that his countenance had grown very fine.
"The act," I said, "would bring grace, wherever it comes from."
"Yes," he assented. "If in the stars and awfulness of space there's
nothing, that does not trouble me; for my greater self is inside me,
safe. And our country has a greater self somewhere. Think!"
"I do not have to think," I replied, "when I know the nobleness we have
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