| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: like these changes, nor the way they came, nor that which came with
them. I would have liked better, under God's pleasure, they had
gone down into the sea, and the Merry Men were dancing on them
now.'
Mary was always serious; it was perhaps the only trait that she
shared with her father; but the tone with which she uttered these
words was even graver than of custom.
'Ay,' said I, 'I feared it came by wreck, and that's by death; yet
when my father died, I took his goods without remorse.'
'Your father died a clean strae death, as the folk say,' said Mary.
'True,' I returned; 'and a wreck is like a judgment. What was she
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: the last thread that bound him to his old life had snapped and
broken. As he turned he saw that Gascoyne was looking at him.
"Dost feel downhearted?" said the young squire, curiously.
"Nay," said Myles, brusquely. Nevertheless his throat was tight
and dry, and the word came huskily in spite of himself.
CHAPTER 5
THE EARL of Mackworth, as was customary among the great lords in
those days, maintained a small army of knights, gentlemen,
men-at-arms, and retainers, who were expected to serve him upon
all occasions of need, and from whom were supplied his quota of
recruits to fill such levies as might be made upon him by the
 Men of Iron |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: Cerfs?--did much to open the abyss of revolution. Monsieur de Necker,
an evil-minded Genovese, set the thing a-going. Foreigners have always
tried to injure France. The maximum did great harm to the Revolution.
Legally Louis XVI. should never have been condemned; a jury would have
acquitted him. Why did Charles X. fall? Napoleon was a great man, and
the facts that prove his genius are anecdotal: he took five pinches of
snuff a minute out of a pocket lined with leather made in his
waistcoat. He looked into all his tradesmen's accounts; he went to
Saint-Denis to judge for himself the prices of things. Talma was his
friend; Talma taught him his gestures; nevertheless, he always refused
to give Talma the Legion of honor! The emperor mounted guard for a
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