| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: same. Larin did not feel up to the walk, so he remained
in the Soviet House to eat an inferior meal, while Radek and I,
with Rostopchin and three other members of the local
committee walked round to the prison. The bell tower of
the old nunnery had been half shot away by artillery, and is
in such a precarious condition that it is proposed to pull it
down. But on passing under it we came into a wide
courtyard surrounded by two-story whitewashed buildings
that seemed scarcely to have suffered at all. We found the
refectory in one of these buildings. It was astonishingly
clean. There were wooden tables, of course without cloths,
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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: an old maid blames herself for her isolation she blames others, and
there is but one step between reproach and the desire for revenge.
But more than this, the ill grace and want of charm noticeable in
these women are the necessary result of their lives. Never having felt
a desire to please, elegance and the refinements of good taste are
foreign to them. They see only themselves in themselves. This instinct
brings them, unconsciously, to choose the things that are most
convenient to themselves, at the sacrifice of those which might be
more agreeable to others. Without rendering account to their own minds
of the difference between themselves and other women, they end by
feeling that difference and suffering under it. Jealousy is an
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: their fellow-citizens acquired a power over the rest which might
truly have been called aristocratic, if it had been capable of
transmission from father to son.
This was the state of things to the east of the Hudson: to
the south-west of that river, and in the direction of the
Floridas, the case was different. In most of the States situated
to the south- west of the Hudson some great English proprietors
had settled, who had imported with them aristocratic principles
and the English law of descent. I have explained the reasons why
it was impossible ever to establish a powerful aristocracy in
America; these reasons existed with less force to the south-west
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