| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: should continue in their present semi-civilised condition, which makes war
possible, for a few generations longer, it is highly probable that as
financiers, as managers of the commissariat department, as inspectors of
provisions and clothing for the army, women will play a very leading part;
and that the nation which is the first to employ its women so may be placed
at a vast advantage over its fellows in time of war. It is not because of
woman's cowardice, incapacity, nor, above all, because of her general
superior virtue, that she will end war when her voice is fully, finally,
and clearly heard in the governance of states--it is because, on this one
point, and on this point almost alone, the knowledge of woman, simply as
woman, is superior to that of man; she knows the history of human flesh;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks
of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it
constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of
facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of
"situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and
purified by the writer.
Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost
in good taste--a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six
years has lived in a provincial town. Her object was to give no hold
for criticism to the Marquise d'Espard or the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: I shall not weep, nor will a word be said,
But I shall kneel before you, oh my king,
And bind my brow forever with a thorn.
TO A CASTILIAN SONG
WE held the book together timidly,
Whose antique music in an alien tongue
Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung
Beneath a high Castilian balcony.
I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy,
And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung,
And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung
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