| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: messengers speeding here and there with notes; and at half-past ten
in the morning, about an hour before its usual hour, the council of
Grunewald sat around the board.
It was not a large body. At the instance of Gondremark, it had
undergone a strict purgation, and was now composed exclusively of
tools. Three secretaries sat at a side-table. Seraphina took the
head; on her right was the Baron, on her left Greisengesang; below
these Grafinski the treasurer, Count Eisenthal, a couple of non-
combatants, and, to the surprise of all, Gotthold. He had been
named a privy councillor by Otto, merely that he might profit by the
salary; and as he was never known to attend a meeting, it had
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: stayed longer that he should break down utterly, and give too great a
triumph to his implacable enemies. Walking like a dunken man he at
last reached Madame de Listomere's house, where he found in one of the
lower rooms his linen, his clothing, and all his papers packed in a
trunk. When he eyes fell on these few remnants of his possessions the
unhappy priest sat down and hid his face in his hands to conceal his
tears from the sight of others. The Abbe Poirel was canon! He,
Birotteau, had neither home, nor means, nor furniture!
Fortunately Mademoiselle Salomon happened to drive past the house, and
the porter, who saw and comprehended the despair of the poor abbe,
made a sign to the coachman. After exchanging a few words with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will
not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if
death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then
only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and
there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges,
can be greater than this? If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world
below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and
finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Minos and
Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were
righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What
would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and
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