| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: of English character, bound up in some way with the success or failure of
England.
"Nothing, in my opinion, could be further from the truth. We are a
distinctive race--no more English, nationally, than the present King
George is German--as closely related and as alike as a celluloid comb and
a stick of dynamite.
"We are bound up in the success of America only. The English are bound up
in the success of England only. We are as friendly as rival corporations.
We can unite in a common cause, as we have, but, once that is over, we
will go our own way--which way, owing to the increase of our shipping and
foreign trade, is likely to become more and more antagonistic to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: Ragon. She caught up a flask of vinegar, and tried to restore the old
priest to consciousness.
"He must have given me the handkerchief that the King used to wipe his
brow on the way to his martyrdom," murmured he. " . . . Poor man!
. . . There was a heart in the steel blade, when none was found in all
France . . . "
The perfumers thought that the poor abbe was raving.
PARIS, January 183l.
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Beauseant, Marquis and Comte de
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: an hour of intoxication, swallowed four
clasp knives such as sailors commonly use;
all of which passed from him in a few days
without much inconvenience. Six years
afterward, he swallowed FOURTEEN knives
of different sizes; by these, however, he
was much disordered, but recovered; and
again, in a paroxysm of intoxication, he
actually swallowed SEVENTEEN, of the
effects of which he died in March, 1809.
On dissection, fourteen knife blades were
 Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |