| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: surface or resting on the shore. Seeing this barren tract with the
ocean on one side, and on the other the arm of the sea which runs up
between Croisic and the rocky shore of Guerande, at the base of which
lay the salt marshes, denuded of vegetation, I looked at Pauline and
asked her if she felt the courage to face the burning sun and the
strength to walk through sand.
"I have boots," she said. "Let us go," and she pointed to the tower of
Batz, which arrested the eye by its immense pile placed there like a
pyramid; but a slender, delicately outlined pyramid, a pyramid so
poetically ornate that the imagination figured in it the earliest ruin
of a great Asiatic city.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: own pleasure;--thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now different
gods had their allotments in different places which they set in order.
Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister, and sprang from the
same father, having a common nature, and being united also in the love of
philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land, which
was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue; and there they implanted brave
children of the soil, and put into their minds the order of government;
their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of
the destruction of those who received the tradition, and the lapse of ages.
For when there were any survivors, as I have already said, they were men
who dwelt in the mountains; and they were ignorant of the art of writing,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: be doubly valuable as certain passports to the father's favour,
which was one step towards that of the daughter, or at least
towards obtaining possession of her either quietly or perforce;
for the knight was not so nice in his love as to consider
the lady's free grace a sine qua non: and to think of being,
by any means whatever, the lord of Locksley and Arlingford,
and the husband of the bewitching Matilda, was to cut in the shades
of futurity a vista very tempting to a soldier of fortune.
He set out in high spirits with a chosen band of followers,
and beat up all the country far and wide around both the Ouse
and the Trent; but fortune did not seem disposed to second
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