| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: dress among the mingled litter, now with a smile, now with a
sigh, reviewed the wonders of the two apartments. She gazed
upon the cartoons with sparkling eyes, and a heightened
colour, and in a somewhat breathless voice, expressed a high
opinion of their merits. She praised the effective
disposition of the rockery, and in the bedroom, of which
Somerset had vainly endeavoured to defend the entry, she
fairly broke forth in admiration. 'How simple and manly!'
she cried: 'none of that effeminacy of neatness, which is so
detestable in a man!' Hard upon this, telling him, before he
had time to reply, that she very well knew her way, and would
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: And a tall beech for handle, from behind
To turn the car at lowest: then o'er the hearth
The wood they hang till the smoke knows it well.
Many the precepts of the men of old
I can recount thee, so thou start not back,
And such slight cares to learn not weary thee.
And this among the first: thy threshing-floor
With ponderous roller must be levelled smooth,
And wrought by hand, and fixed with binding chalk,
Lest weeds arise, or dust a passage win
Splitting the surface, then a thousand plagues
 Georgics |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: fortune. As to the family possessions in Leon, they had been in
litigation between the Molinas of Douai and the branch of the family
which remained in Spain. The Molinas of Leon won the domain and
assumed the title of Comtes de Nourho, though the Claes alone had a
legal right to it. But the pride of a Belgian burgher was superior to
the haughty arrogance of Castile: after the civil rights were
instituted, Balthazar Claes cast aside the ragged robes of his Spanish
nobility for his more illustrious descent from the Ghent martyr.
The patriotic sentiment was so strongly developed in the families
exiled under Charles V. that, to the very close of the eighteenth
century, the Claes remained faithful to the manners and customs and
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