| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise it made
at first. Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary
effect. For this reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles
it by persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously
told it she wouldn't give it. As already observed, I was not at
home when it first came, and she told me she found it in the woods.
It seems odd that it should be the only one, yet it must be so,
for I have worn myself out these many weeks trying to find another
one to add to my collection, and for this one to play with; for
surely then it would be quieter, and we could tame it more easily.
But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and strangest of all, no
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: and Mr. Macaulay. Yesterday I went to return the visit of the
Milmans and found that the entrance to their house, he being a
prebend of Westminster Abbey, was actually in the cloisters of the
Abbey. They were not at home, but I took my footman and wandered at
leisure through the cloisters, treading at every step on the tomb of
some old abbot with dates of 1160 and thereabouts.
Nothing could be more delightful than London is now, if I had only a
little more physical vigor to enjoy it. We see everybody more
frequently, and know them better than in the full season, and we
have some of the best specimens of English society, too, here just
now, as the Whig ministry brings a good deal of the ability of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Domestic Peace by Honore de Balzac: are you getting on?"
"She is a married woman, my dear fellow."
"What does that matter?"
"Oh, deuce take it! I am a decent sort of man," replied the Colonel.
"I have no idea of paying my addresses to a woman I cannot marry.
Besides, Martial, she expressly told me that she did not intend to
dance."
"Colonel, I will bet a hundred napoleons to your gray horse that she
will dance with me this evening."
"Done!" said the Colonel, putting his hand in the coxcomb's.
"Meanwhile I am going to look for Soulanges; he perhaps knows the
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