| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Four Arthurian Romances by Chretien DeTroyes: for which I shall make just return if God grant that I come off
from the battle with honour." And frankly he replies to him:
"Ask confidently for what you want, whatever it be, for nothing
of mine shall lack you." Then Erec said that he wished to defend
the hawk on behalf of his daughter; for surely there will be no
damsel who is one hundredth part as beautiful as she. And if he
takes her with him, he will have good and just reason to maintain
and to prove that she is entitled to carry away the hawk. Then
he added: "Sire, you know not what guest you have sheltered here,
nor do you know my estate and kin. I am the son of a rich and
puissant king: my father's name is King Lac, and the Bretons call
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: And they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis:
"In your flying, look not downward,
Take good heed and look not downward,
Lest some strange mischance should happen,
Lest some great mishap befall you!"
Fast and far they fled to northward,
Fast and far through mist and sunshine,
Fed among the moors and fen-lands,
Slept among the reeds and rushes.
On the morrow as they journeyed,
Buoyed and lifted by the South-wind,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: plain speaking, the rarest social ingredient. A business which should
consist in going out at night to look for goods to sell in the day
would obviously be impossible. You find the instinct of forestalling
the market in the very match-seller. How to forestall the market--that
is the one idea of the so-called honest tradesman of the Rue Saint-
Denis, as of the most brazen-fronted speculator. If stocks are heavy,
sell you must. If sales are slow, you must tickle your customer; hence
the signs of the Middle Ages, hence the modern prospectus. I do not
see a hair's-breadth of difference between attracting custom and
forcing your goods upon the consumer. It may happen, it is sure to
happen, it often happens, that a shopkeeper gets hold of damaged
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