| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: Coming downstairs to meet my colleague in the hall, I remembered a pair
of gloves that had required three stitches and that had received them--
with a publicity perhaps not edifying--while I sat with the children
at their tea, served on Sundays, by exception, in that cold,
clean temple of mahogany and brass, the "grown-up" dining room.
The gloves had been dropped there, and I turned in to recover them.
The day was gray enough, but the afternoon light still lingered,
and it enabled me, on crossing the threshold, not only to recognize,
on a chair near the wide window, then closed, the articles I wanted,
but to become aware of a person on the other side of the window
and looking straight in. One step into the room had sufficed;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: sanctity of symbols. Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own
conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinction between
formal and essential truth. Of his punning perversions, his
legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is even vain; but when he has
told and been detected in a lie, there is not a hair upon his body
but confesses guilt. To a dog of gentlemanly feeling theft and
falsehood are disgraceful vices. The canine, like the human,
gentleman demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's "JE NE SAIS QUOI
DE GENEREUX." He is never more than half ashamed of having barked
or bitten; and for those faults into which he has been led by the
desire to shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even under
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the theatre, the
Luxembourg gardens, in /grisettes'/ rooms, even in the law schools--
anywhere rather than in their horrible rooms--horrible for purposes of
study, delightful as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking
in. Put a cloth on the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from
the best eating-house in the neighborhood--places for four--two of
them in petticoats--show a lithograph of this "Interior" to the
veriest bigot, and she will be bound to smile.
We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our dissipation
lay in the most serious facts of the politics of the time. Juste and I
could not see any room for us in the two professions our parents
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