| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: "What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.
"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I
have always been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire
my death?"
"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a
part of my own life!" cried Don Juan.
("We can always SAY this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought;
"it is as if I laid the whole world at my mistress' feet.")
The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when the old poodle
barked. Don Juan shivered; the response was so intelligent that
he fancied the dog must have understood him.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: Two days later the young man departed. In spite of the letters which
he wrote regularly to Ursula, she fell a prey to an illness without
apparent cause. Like a fine fruit with a worm at the core, a single
thought gnawed her heart. She lost both appetite and color. The first
time her godfather asked her what she felt, she replied:--
"I want to see the ocean."
"It is difficult to take you to a sea-port in the depth of winter,"
answered the old man.
"Shall I really go?" she said.
If the wind was high, Ursula was inwardly convulsed, certain, in spite
of the learned assurances of the doctor and the abbe, that Savinien
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: moment. She had bitten her lips and kept from laughing
by a supreme effort. Not a word of the solemn
ceremonial, however, had escaped her consciousness.
"And in the face of this company," the preacher's
rich voice was saying, "to join together this Man and
this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is commended of St.
Paul to be honorable among all men: and therefore is
not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly;
but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in
the fear of God. Into this holy estate these two
persons present come now to be joined. If any man
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