| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Russia in 1919 by Arthur Ransome: while to be kind to a crowd of unfortunates just about to be
flung into a boiling cauldron. We walked a few hundred
yards along the line and then turned into a road deep in
snow through a little bare wood, and so down to the little
wooden bridge over the narrow frozen stream that
separates Finland from Russia. The bridge, not twenty yards
across, has a toll bar at each end, two sentry boxes and two
sentries. On the Russian side the bar was the familiar black
and white of the old Russian Empire, with a sentry box to
match. The Finns seemingly had not yet had time to paint
their bar and box.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: saw him, after dinner, sink into an armchair by the corner of the
fireplace, and remain there, gloomy and abstracted. She noted with
terror the slow changes which deteriorated that face, once, to her
eyes, sublime through love: the life of the soul was retreating from
it; the structure remained, but the spirit was gone. Sometimes the
eyes were glassy, and seemed as if they had turned their gaze and were
looking inward. When the children had gone to bed, and the silence and
solitude oppressed her, Pepita would say, "My friend, are you ill?"
and Balthazar would make no answer; or if he answered, he would come
to himself with a quiver, like a man snatched suddenly from sleep, and
utter a "No" so harsh and grating that it fell like a stone on the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: "I will go right up to the mayor's house now," said Katy, as she
bade him good afternoon.
Before she went, she returned home and nicely enclosed six sticks
of candy in white paper as a present for Freddie, the mayor's
little son. On her way up to Park Street she opened Simon's
paper, and read it. It sounded funny to her, with its big words
and fine sentences; and then what a puffing Master Simon had
given himself! She even began to wonder if there was not
something about her gentlemanly friend which was not all right.
She reached the mayor's house, and as it was his time to be at
home, she was conducted to the library.
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