| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: Already she displayed those feline graces which nothing, not even
captivity nor the sight of her dreadful scaffold, could lessen. The
two queens--one at the dawn, the other in the midsummer of life--
presented at this moment the utmost contrast. Catherine was an
imposing queen, an impenetrable widow, without other passion than that
of power. Mary was a light-hearted, careless bride, making playthings
of her triple crowns. One foreboded great evils,--foreseeing the
assassination of the Guises as the only means of suppressing enemies
who were resolved to rise above the Throne and the Parliament;
foreseeing also the bloodshed of a long and bitter struggle; while
the other little anticipated her own judicial murder. A sudden and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: scene of heart-rending farewells, for they all foreboded what the
future should bring forth, Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne returned to her
desolate home.
The two brothers were killed together under the eyes of the Emperor at
Sommo-Sierra, the one defending the other, both being already in
command of their troop. The last words of each were, "Laurence, /cy
meurs/!"
The elder d'Hauteserre died a colonel at the attack on the redoubt at
Moscow, where his brother took his place.
Adrien d'Hauteserre, appointed brigadier-general at the battle of
Dresden, was dangerously wounded there and was sent to Cinq-Cygne for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: "from the valley," sat at table, and the sheared one
was thus tacitly advised to go and grow more wool.
Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed
for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily tra-
versed the unlucky pathway. After a drink of corn
whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung
himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy,
out at the mountains immersed in the summer haze.
The little white patch he saw away up on the side of
Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he had been
born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the
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