| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Two Brothers by Honore de Balzac: of the Porte-Saint-Martin, has taken him to lodge with her, in a
miserable attic in the rue de Vendome. Philippe is dying; and if you
and his brother are not able to pay for the doctor and medicines, we
shall be obliged, for the sake of curing him, to have him taken to the
hospital of the Capuchins. For three hundred francs we would keep him
where he is. But he must have a nurse; for at night, when Mademoiselle
Florentine is at the theatre, he persists in going out, and takes
things that are irritating and injurious to his malady and its
treatment. As we are fond of him, this makes us really very unhappy.
The poor fellow has pledged the pension of his cross for the next
three years; he is temporarily displaced from his office, and he has
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: IV. By this we are also to know that this liberality shall extend
even to enemies and opponents. For what manner of good deed is
that, if we are liberal only to our friends? As Christ teaches,
Luke vi, even a wicked man does that to another who is his
friend. Besides, the brute beasts also do good and are generous
to their kind. Therefore a Christian must rise higher, let his
liberality serve also the undeserving, evil-doers, enemies, and
the ungrateful, even as his heavenly Father makes His sun to rise
on good and evil, and the rain to fall on the grateful and
ungrateful.
But here it will be found how hard it is to do good works
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: result of an experiment of my own. You must know that, for my
father and grandfather's time, at least, the apartment which was
assigned to you last night had been shut on account of reports
that it was disturbed by supernatural sights and noises. When I
came, a few weeks since, into possession of the estate, I thought
the accommodation which the castle afforded for my friends was
not extensive enough to permit the inhabitants of the invisible
world to retain possession of a comfortable sleeping apartment.
I therefore caused the Tapestried Chamber, as we call it, to be
opened, and, without destroying its air of antiquity, I had such
new articles of furniture placed in it as became the modern
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