| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: I summon you next, be readier to attend."
"My lord duke," said one man, "beseech you, tarry not here alone.
Keep but a handful of lances at your hand."
"Fellow," said the duke, "I have forborne to chide you for your
slowness. Cross me not, therefore. I trust my hand and arm, for
all that I be crooked. Ye were backward when the trumpet sounded;
and ye are now too forward with your counsels. But it is ever so;
last with the lance and first with tongue. Let it be reversed."
And with a gesture that was not without a sort of dangerous
nobility, he waved them off.
The footmen climbed again to their seats behind the men-at-arms,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: LANE. No, sir. Not even for ready money.
ALGERNON. That will do, Lane, thank you.
LANE. Thank you, sir. [Goes out.]
ALGERNON. I am greatly distressed, Aunt Augusta, about there being
no cucumbers, not even for ready money.
LADY BRACKNELL. It really makes no matter, Algernon. I had some
crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely
for pleasure now.
ALGERNON. I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.
LADY BRACKNELL. It certainly has changed its colour. From what
cause I, of course, cannot say. [ALGERNON crosses and hands tea.]
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: but he was specially trained for social life by the handsome and well-
known Lady Dudley.
In the eyes of many Parisian women, Felix, a sort of hero of romance,
owed much of his success to the evil that was said of him. Madame de
Manerville had closed the list of his amorous adventures; and perhaps
her dismissal had something to do with his frame of mind. At any rate,
without being in any way a Don Juan, he had gathered in the world of
love as many disenchantments as he had met with in the world of
politics. That ideal of womanhood and of passion, the type of which--
perhaps to his sorrow--had lighted and governed his dawn of life, he
despaired of ever finding again.
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