| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Collection of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: two pigs to go to market in
Lancashire. Attend, Alexander. I have
had no end of trouble in getting
these papers from the policeman."
Pigling Bland listened gravely;
Alexander was hopelessly volatile.
I pinned the papers, for safety,
inside their waistcoat pockets;
Aunt Pettitoes gave to each a
little bundle, and eight conversation
peppermints with appropriate
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give
and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they
are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: together at the sight of a snake by a woodside. At the risk of
spoiling my story and of being taken for a coxcomb, I state my
intention at the outset.
I myself played a part in this almost commonplace tragedy; so if
it fails to interest you, the failure will be in part my own
fault, in part owing to historical veracity. Plenty of things in
real life are superlatively uninteresting; so that it is one-half
of art to select from realities those which contain possibilities
of poetry.
In 1819 I was traveling from Paris to Moulins. The state of my
finances obliged me to take an outside place. Englishmen, as you
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