| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: every hour like a bitter tide.
Obliged at last to keep her bed, the duchess failed rapidly, for she
was then unable to see her son, forbidden as he was by her compact
with his father to approach the house. The sorrow of the youth was
equal to that of the mother. Inspired by the genius of repressed
feeling, Etienne created a mystical language by which to communicate
with his mother. He studied the resources of his voice like an opera-
singer, and often he came beneath her windows to let her hear his
melodiously melancholy voice, when Beauvouloir by a sign informed him
she was alone. Formerly, as a babe, he had consoled his mother with
his smiles, now, become a poet, he caressed her with his melodies.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: riding breeches and boots, in combination with the usual gray
shirt, knotted kerchief and wide-brimmed felt hat of the horseman
of the plains. The dust of the desert lay thick on him, without
in the least obscuring a certain ribald elegance, a distinction
of wickedness that rested upon him as his due. To this result his
debonair manner contributed, though it carried with it no
suggestion of weakness. To the girl who looked up and found him
there he looked indescribably sinister.
She half rose to her feet, dilated eyes fixed on him.
"Good evenin'. I came to make sure y'u got safe home, Miss
Messiter," he said.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: Away late that awful Saturday night when I was wandering
around about this prisoner's place, grieving and troubled,
I was down by the corner of the tobacker- field and I
heard a sound like digging in a gritty soil; and I crope
nearer and peeped through the vines that hung on the
rail fence and seen this prisoner SHOVELING--shoveling
with a long-handled shovel--heaving earth into a big
hole that was most filled up; his back was to me, but it
was bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old green
baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle
of the back like somebody had hit him with a snowball.
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