The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: roused me in the middle of the night and summoned me in fear to
Athenais' cradle. Her head was too low, and I found Armand all
uncovered, his feet purple with cold.
"Darling mother!" he cried, rousing up and flinging his arms round me.
There, dear, is one of our night scenes for you.
How important it is for a mother to have her children by her side at
night! It is not for a nurse, however careful she may be, to take them
up, comfort them, and hush them to sleep again, when some horrid
nightmare has disturbed them. For they have their dreams, and the task
of explaining away one of those dread visions of the night is the more
arduous because the child is scared, stupid, and only half awake. It
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: brought in its train miseries of so deplorable a nature, that you
will have difficulty in believing the simple recital that follows.
"One evening, when M. de T---- remained to sup with us, we heard
the sound of a carriage stopping at the door of the inn.
Curiosity tempted us to see who it was that arrived at this hour.
They told us it was young G---- M----, the son of our most
vindictive enemy, of that debauched old sinner who had
incarcerated me in St. Lazare, and Manon in the Hospital. His
name made the blood mount to my cheeks. `It is Providence that
has led him here,' said I to M. de T----, that I may punish him
for the cowardly baseness of his father. He shall not escape
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far regions.
Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, when the worn letter was read
and wept over. At the church door, afterward, he dropped a peculiarly cold
iceberg down the clergyman's back with the question--
'Do you know that letter to be genuine?'
It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced;
but it had that sickening effect which first-uttered suspicions
against one's idol always have. Some talk followed--
'Why--what should make you suspect that it isn't genuine?'
'Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat, and compact, and fluent,
and nicely put together for an ignorant person, an unpractised hand.
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