| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Pons by Honore de Balzac: grotesque face came to be lighted up with a smile; usually, surely, it
must have worn the dispirited, passive look of the obscure toiler
condemned to labor without ceasing for the barest necessaries of life.
Yet when you noticed that the odd-looking old man was carrying some
object (evidently precious) in his right hand with a mother's care;
concealing it under the skirts of his coat to keep it from collisions
in the crowd, and still more, when you remarked that important air
always assumed by an idler when intrusted with a commission, you would
have suspected him of recovering some piece of lost property, some
modern equivalent of the marquise's poodle; you would have recognized
the assiduous gallantry of the "man of the Empire" returning in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Sportsman by Xenophon: is less to hinder making the net lines clear and clean quite early, so
that nothing may cling to them. The keeper must fix the forked props
slantwise, so as to stand the strain when subjected to tension. He
must attach the nooses equally on the points; and see that the props
are regularly fixed, raising the pouch towards the middle;[12] and
into the slip-rope he must insert a large, long stone, to prevent the
net from stretching in the opposite direction, when it has got the
hare inside. He will fix the rows of poles with stretches of net
sufficiently high to prevent the creature leaping over.[13] In
hunting, "no procrastination" should be the motto, since it is
sportsmanlike at once and a proof of energy by all means to effect a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: there. A voice within her cried aloud to Eugenie to save her sister;
the morrow might be too late. She took a vast responsibility upon
herself, but she resolved to tell all to the count. Surely he would be
indulgent when he knew that his honor was still safe. The countess was
deluded rather than sinful. Eugenie feared to be treacherous and base
in revealing secrets that society (agreeing on this point) holds to be
inviolable; but--she saw her sister's future, she trembled lest she
should some day be deserted, ruined by Nathan, poor, suffering,
disgraced, wretched, and she hesitated no longer; she sent in her name
and asked to see the count.
Felix, astonished at the visit, had a long conversation with his
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