| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: in the matter of doors and windows expires "sub dio." The tow to make
the first rope can be borrowed. But the principal revenue of Pere
Fourchon and his satellite Mouche, the natural son of one of his
natural daughters, came from the otters; and then there were
breakfasts and dinners given them by peasants who could neither read
nor write, and were glad to use the old fellow's talents when they had
a bill to make out, or a letter to dispatch. Besides all this, he knew
how to play the clarionet, and he went about with his friend
Vermichel, the miller of Soulanges, to village weddings and the grand
balls given at the Tivoli of Soulanges.
Vermichel's name was Michel Vert, but the transposition was so
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: heavy metals, polonium, radium, ythorium, thorium, carium, and
new things, too. There's a stuff called Xk--provisionally.
There they are, mucked up together in a sort of rotting sand.
What it is, how it got made, I don't know. It's like as if some
young creator had been playing about there. There it lies in two
heaps, one small, one great, and the world for miles about it is
blasted and scorched and dead. You can have it for the getting.
You've got to take it--that's all!"
"That sounds all right," said I. "Have you samples?"
"Well--should I? You can have anything--up to two ounces."
"Where is it?"...
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: found it more pleasant than diplomatic dinners usually. At the
English tables we meet people who know each other well, and have a
common culture and tastes and habits of familiarity, and a fund of
pleasant stories, but of course, at foreign tables, they neither
know each other or the English so well as to give the same easy flow
to conversation. I am afraid we are the greatest diners-out in
London, but we are brought into contact a great deal with the
literary and Parliamentary people, which our colleagues know little
about, as also with the clergy and the judges. I should not be
willing to make it the habit of my life, but it is time not misspent
during the years of our abode here. . . . The good old Archbishop of
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