| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: reaction on the boy; he felt an intense heat pass through the marrow
of his bones.
"What is it, mother?"
"Listen! To-morrow all will be over for me. We shall see each other no
more. To-morrow you will be a man, my child. So I am obliged to make
some arrangements, which must remain a secret, known only to us. Take
the key of my little table. That is it. Now open the drawer. You will
find two sealed papers to the left. There is the name of LOUIS on one,
and on the other MARIE."
"Here they are, mother."
"Those are your certificates of birth, darling; you will want them.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: wages I should receive after graduating. I entered upon the small
enterprise of 'learning' twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life.
If I had really known what I was about to require of my faculties,
I should not have had the courage to begin. I supposed
that all a pilot had to do was to keep his boat in the river,
and I did not consider that that could be much of a trick,
since it was so wide.
The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon,
and it was 'our watch' until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief,
'straightened her up,' plowed her along past the sterns of the other
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Master Key by L. Frank Baum: "That's true, Mr.--Mr.--Demon," said the boy. "Excuse me if I don't
get your name right, but I understood you to say you are a demon."
"Certainly. The Demon of Electricity."
"But electricity is a good thing, you know, and--and--"
"Well?"
"I've always understood that demons were bad things," added Rob, boldly.
"Not necessarily," returned his visitor. "If you will take the
trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be
either good or bad, like any other class of beings. Originally all
demons were good, yet of late years people have come to consider all
demons evil. I do not know why. Should you read Hesiod you will find
The Master Key |
