| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: the ceiling were of chestnut which had turned as black as ebony. A
tall clock in a green case painted with flowers, a table with a faded
green cloth, several chairs, two candlesticks on the chimney-piece,
between which was an Infant Jesus in wax under a glass case, completed
the furniture of the room. The chimney-piece of wood with common
mouldings was filled by a fire-board covered by a painting
representing the Good Shepherd with a lamb over his shoulder, which
was probably the gift of some young girl,--the mayor's daughter, or
the judge's daughter,--in return for the pastor's care of her
education.
The forlorn condition of the house was distressing to behold; the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The pipe to powerful lips -
The cup of life's for him that drinks
And not for him that sips.
TO SYDNEY
NOT thine where marble-still and white
Old statues share the tempered light
And mock the uneven modern flight,
But in the stream
Of daily sorrow and delight
To seek a theme.
I too, O friend, have steeled my heart
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Ages passed. Many forms of life came and went upon
the Tree of Life, but still all were attached to the parent
plant by stems of varying lengths. At length the fruit tree
consisted in tiny plant men, such as we now see reproduced
in such huge dimensions in the Valley Dor, but still hanging
to the limbs and branches of the tree by the stems which
grew from the tops of their heads.
"The buds from which the plant men blossomed resembled
large nuts about a foot in diameter, divided by double
partition walls into four sections. In one section grew the plant
man, in another a sixteen-legged worm, in the third the
 The Gods of Mars |