| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: well as her gentlest moments." As he tramped the Western
States and Territories, taking tin-types, the boy was continually
getting hold of books, good, bad, and indifferent, popular and
abstruse, from the novels of Sylvanus Cobb to Euclid's
Elements, both of which I found (to my almost equal wonder)
he had managed to peruse: he was taking stock by the way, of
the people, the products, and the country, with an eye unusually
observant and a memory unusually retentive; and he was
collecting for himself a body of magnanimous and semi-
intellectual nonsense, which he supposed to be the natural
thoughts and to contain the whole duty of the born American.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: as she was, became motionless and livid.
"Who has come?" asked the prosecutor.
"A recruit, whom the mayor has sent to lodge here," replied Brigitte,
showing the billet.
"True," said the prosecutor, reading the paper. "We expect a
detachment to-night."
And he went away.
The countess had too much need at this moment to believe in the
sincerity of her former attorney, to distrust his promise. She mounted
the stairs rapidly, though her strength seemed failing her; then she
opened the door, saw her son, and fell into his arms half dead,--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: a married man, on the point of leading to the altar the innocent
and beautiful creature upon whom he was about to practise a base
and unmanly deceit. He proclaimed his villainy on the spot, and
the marriage was interrupted, of course. But against the opinion
of more thinking men, who considered Sir Philip Forester as
having thrown himself out of the rank of men of honour, Captain
Falconer admitted him to the privilege of such, accepted a
challenge from him, and in the rencounter received a mortal
wound. Such are the ways of Heaven, mysterious in our eyes.
Lady Forester never recovered the shock of this dismal
intelligence.
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