| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: feminine disappointment.
Let us make haste, then, to get back for safety to the
ornithological aspect of the subject. Here there can be no
penalties for heresy. And here I make bold to avow my conviction
that the pairing season is not the only point of interest in the
life of the birds; nor is the instinct by which they mate altogether
and beyond comparison the noblest passion that stirs their feathered
breasts.
'T is true, the time of mating is their prettiest season; but it is
very short. How little we should know of the drama of their airy
life if we had eyes only for this brief scene! Their finest
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: nevertheless, retains some glimmer of hope. His mistress illumined
each difficulty. To him she was no longer a woman, but a supernatural
being seen through the incense of his desires. A feeble cry, which he
fancied came from the hotel de Poitiers, restored him to himself and
to a sense of his true situation. Throwing himself on his pallet to
reflect on his course, he heard a slight movement which echoed faintly
from the spiral staircase. He listened attentively, and the whispered
words, "He has gone to bed," said by the old woman, reached his ear.
By an accident unknown probably to the architect, the slightest noise
on the staircase sounded in the room of the apprentices, so that
Philippe did not lose a single movement of the miser and his sister
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: Emperor!' The enthusiasm for that Wonder of the Ages was thoroughly
genuine in these parts. Dauphine behaved handsomely; and I was
uncommonly pleased to learn that people here shed tears of joy on
seeing his gray overcoat once more.
"It was on March 1st that Napoleon set out with two hundred men to
conquer the kingdom of France and Navarre, which by March 20th had
become the French Empire again. On that day he found himself in Paris,
and a clean sweep had been made of everything; he had won back his
beloved France, and had called all his soldiers about him again, and
three words of his had done it all--'Here am I!' 'Twas the greatest
miracle God ever worked! Was it ever known in the world before that a
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