| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: official look extremely sinister to the eyes of that old retainer
of feudalism, who shared to the full his master's present fears.
"Monsieur desires?" he asked, between respect and mistrust.
And then a crisp voice startled him.
"Why, Benoit! Name of a name! Have you completely forgotten me?"
With a shaking hand the old man raised the lantern he carried so
as to throw its light more fully upon that lean, wide-mouthed
countenance.
"M. Andre!" he cried. "M.Andre!" And then he looked at the sash
and the cockade, and hesitated, apparently at a loss.
But Andre-Louis stepped past him into the wide vestibule, with its
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: She looked--with eyne wherein were blent
All ardors of the Orient;
She spake--all magics of the South
Were compassed in the witch's mouth;--
He thought the scarlet lips of her
More precious than En Gedi's myrrh,
The lips of that Sabean girl;
By many an amorous sun caressed,
From lifted brow to amber breast
She gleamed in vivid loveliness--
And lithe as any leopardess--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families led the domestic
life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose connubial couch was
exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais Royal. Two or
three kept up the traditions of the Regency, filling cleverer
women with something like disgust. The great lady of the new
school exercised no influence at all over the manners of the
time; and yet she might have done much. She might, at worst,
have presented as dignified a spectacle as English-women of the
same rank. But she hesitated feebly among old precedents, became
a bigot by force of circumstances, and allowed nothing of herself
to appear, not even her better qualities.
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