| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: seemed a constant inquiry, her eyes were always on him, like those of
a miser on his treasure; her admiring abnegation was quite pathetic.
In her might be seen her mother's spirit and teaching. Her beauty, as
great as ever, was poetically touched by the gentle shadow of
concealed melancholy.
On seeing Hortense come in, it struck Lisbeth that some long-
suppressed complaint was about to break through the thin veil of
reticence. Lisbeth, from the first days of the honeymoon, had been
sure that this couple had too small an income for so great a passion.
Hortense, as she embraced her mother, exchanged with her a few
whispered phrases, heart to heart, of which the mystery was betrayed
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: excitement, to gaze at chained tigers and boa-constrictors, shuddering
all the while because the barriers between them are so weak. Although
the little old man's back was bent like a day-laborer's, it was easy
to see that he must formerly have been of medium height. His excessive
thinness, the slenderness of his limbs, proved that he had always been
of slight build. He wore black silk breeches which hung about his
fleshless thighs in folds, like a lowered veil. An anatomist would
instinctively have recognized the symptoms of consumption in its
advanced stages, at sight of the tiny legs which served to support
that strange frame. You would have said that they were a pair of
cross-bones on a gravestone. A feeling of profound horror seized the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: save one's feelings, even if it is not professing to stand for a welcome.
Wilson heard footsteps at his threshold, then the clearing of a throat.
"It's that fickle-tempered, dissipated young goose--poor devil,
he find friends pretty scarce today, likely, after the disgrace of
carrying a personal assault case into a law-court."
A dejected knock. "Come in!"
Tom entered, and dropped into a chair, without saying anything.
Wilson said kindly:
"Why, my boy, you look desolate. Don't take it so hard.
Try and forget you have been kicked."
"Oh, dear," said Tom, wretchedly, "it's not that, Pudd'nhead--
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