| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: to private individuals and other investments, the firm possessed about
six millions of capital altogether. Among those private individuals
was the Baroness d'Aldrigger with her three hundred thousand francs,
Beaudenord with four hundred thousand, d'Aiglemont with a million,
Matifat with three hundred thousand, Charles Grandet (who married
Mlle. d'Aubrion) with half a million, and so forth, and so forth.
"Now, if Nucingen had himself brought out a joint-stock company, with
the shares of which he proposed to indemnify his creditors after more
or less ingenious manoeuvring, he might perhaps have been suspected.
He set about it more cunningly than that. He made some one else put up
the machinery that was to play the part of the Mississippi scheme in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Bronte Sisters: Her hand will pause, her head decline;
That labour seems so hard and dreary,
On which no ray of hope may shine.
Thus the pale blight of time and sorrow
Will shade with grey her soft, dark hair;
Then comes the day that knows no morrow,
And death succeeds to long despair.
So speaks experience, sage and hoary;
I see it plainly, know it well,
Like one who, having read a story,
Each incident therein can tell.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: hated to be inhospitable, but in one thing he was his father's son. He
had a strong sense that his house was his own and no man else's; and to
lie at a guest's mercy was what he refused. He hated to seem harsh.
But that was Frank's lookout. If Frank had been commonly discreet, he
would have been decently courteous. And there was another
consideration. The secret he was protecting was not his own merely; it
was hers: it belonged to that inexpressible she who was fast taking
possession of his soul, and whom he would soon have defended at the cost
of burning cities. By the time he had watched Frank as far as the
Swingleburn-foot, appearing and disappearing in the tarnished heather,
still stalking at a fierce gait but already dwindled in the distance
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