| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: speciously strong and beautiful effects - that disinterested love
of dulness which has set so many Peter Bells to paint the river-
side primrose. It was then chosen for its proximity to Paris. And
for the same cause, and by the force of tradition, the painter of
to-day continues to inhabit and to paint it. There is in France
scenery incomparable for romance and harmony. Provence, and the
valley of the Rhone from Vienne to Tarascon, are one succession of
masterpieces waiting for the brush. The beauty is not merely
beauty; it tells, besides, a tale to the imagination, and surprises
while it charms. Here you shall see castellated towns that would
befit the scenery of dreamland; streets that glow with colour like
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: treated by the world, as bound for ever to a man whose vices were
notorious. Yet what are the vices generally known, to the various
miseries that a woman may be subject to, which, though deeply felt,
eating into the soul, elude description, and may be glossed over!
A false morality is even established, which makes all
the virtue of women consist in chastity, submission,
and the forgiveness of injuries.
"I pardon my oppressor--bitterly as I lament the loss of my
child, torn from me in the most violent manner. But nature revolts,
and my soul sickens at the bare supposition, that it could ever be
a duty to pretend affection, when a separation is necessary to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: green, and so were the shutters on the lower storey. The kitchen
occupied the ground-floor of the pavilion on the courtyard, and the
cook, a stout, strong girl, protected by two enormous dogs, performed
the functions of portress. The facade, composed of five windows, and
the two pavilions, which projected nine feet, were in the style
Phellion. Above the door the master of the house had inserted a tablet
of white marble, on which, in letters of gold, were read the words,
"Aurea mediocritas." Above the sun-dial, affixed to one panel of the
facade, he had also caused to be inscribed this sapient maxim: "Umbra
mea vita, sic!"
The former window-sills had recently been superceded by sills of red
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