| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: her betrothed. A few months later, towards the month of May, the home-
life of the doctor's household had resumed the quite tenor of its way
but with one welcome visitor the more. The attentions of the young
viscount were soon interpreted in the town as those of a future
husband,--all the more because his manners and those of Ursula,
whether in church, or on the promenade, though dignified and reserved,
betrayed the understanding of their hearts. Dionis pointed out to the
heirs that the doctor had never asked Madame de Portenduere for the
interest of his money, three years of which was now due.
"She'll be forced to yield, and consent to this derogatory marriage of
her son," said the notary. "If such a misfortune happens it is
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: opposite the equal angles bulging outward with the contour of the
ship. It is lined with eight pens of sixteen bunks apiece, four
bunks below and four above on either side. At night the place is lit
with two lanterns, one to each table. As the steamer beat on her way
among the rough billows, the light passed through violent phases of
change, and was thrown to and fro and up and down with startling
swiftness. You were tempted to wonder, as you looked, how so thin a
glimmer could control and disperse such solid blackness. When Jones
and I entered we found a little company of our acquaintances seated
together at the triangular foremost table. A more forlorn party, in
more dismal circumstances, it would be hard to imagine. The motion
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: it--that is what you were saying?
NICIAS: I was.
SOCRATES: Then this is certainly not a thing which every pig would know,
as the proverb says, and therefore he could not be courageous.
NICIAS: I think not.
SOCRATES: Clearly not, Nicias; not even such a big pig as the Crommyonian
sow would be called by you courageous. And this I say not as a joke, but
because I think that he who assents to your doctrine, that courage is the
knowledge of the grounds of fear and hope, cannot allow that any wild beast
is courageous, unless he admits that a lion, or a leopard, or perhaps a
boar, or any other animal, has such a degree of wisdom that he knows things
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