| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: at night. Luigi was now in the habit of waiting till his wife was
asleep, and then going up to his garret to write. Four o'clock struck.
Ginevra lay down again, and pretended to sleep. Presently Luigi
returned, overcome with fatigue and drowsiness. Ginevra looked sadly
on the beautiful, worn face, where toil and care were already drawing
lines of wrinkles.
"It is for me he spends his nights in writing," she said to herself,
weeping.
A thought dried her tears. She would imitate Luigi. That same day she
went to a print-shop, and, by help of a letter of recommendation she
had obtained from Elie Magus, one of her picture-dealers, she obtained
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: on the side of the good man.
80. 1. In a little state with a small population, I would so order it,
that, though there were individuals with the abilities of ten or a
hundred men, there should be no employment of them; I would make the
people, while looking on death as a grievous thing, yet not remove
elsewhere (to avoid it).
2. Though they had boats and carriages, they should have no occasion
to ride in them; though they had buff coats and sharp weapons, they
should have no occasion to don or use them.
3. I would make the people return to the use of knotted cords (instead
of the written characters).
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: be formally obedient is manifest. The Act imposed the tax. He has
paid his taxes, although he thus contributes to the ways and means
of his immediate rival. The Act decreed the supreme court, and he
sends his partisans to be tried at Mulinuu, although he thus places
them (as I shall have occasion to show) in a position far from
wholly safe. From this literal conformity, in matters regulated,
to the terms of the Berlin plenipotentiaries, we may plausibly
infer, in regard to the rest, a no less exact observance of the
famous and obscure "laws and customs of Samoa."
But though it may be possible to attain, in the study, to some such
adumbration of an understanding, it were plainly unfair to expect
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