| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: aware that it was too much for the child, but lack of affection,
and a vague, extenuating belief that especially trying jobs
developed one, made him merciless. The boy frequently boiled with
rage, but he was so weaponless, so completely in his father's
power--there was no escape from this tyranny. He knew he could
not live without him; even his mother could not do that. His
mother! What a sense of rest would come over him when he sat in
her capacious lap, his head on her soft shoulder. With her cheek
against his and her kind hand gently patting the back of his
still chubby one, something hard in him always melted away.
"Why do I love you so, mama," he asked once, "and hate papa so?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: Saint-Jean, and I retired to the Loire, after we were all disbanded.
Faith! I was disgusted with France; I couldn't stand it. In fact, I
should certainly have got myself arrested; so off I went, with two or
three dashing fellows,--Selves, Besson, and others, who are now in
Egypt,--and we entered the service of pacha Mohammed; a queer sort of
fellow he was, too! Once a tobacco merchant in the bazaars, he is now
on the high-road to be a sovereign prince. You've all seen him in that
picture by Horace Vernet,--'The Massacre of the Mameluks.' What a
handsome fellow he was! But I wouldn't give up the religion of my
fathers and embrace Islamism; all the more because the abjuration
required a surgical operation which I hadn't any fancy for. Besides,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: grandfather on the mother's side had been something or other in the
Church. He had come into the paternal estate, two or three
thousand a year in Hampshire; but he had let the place
advantageously and was generous to four plain sisters who lived at
Bournemouth and adored him. The family was hideous all round, but
the very salt of the earth. He was supposed to be unspeakably
clever; he was fond of London, fond of books, of intellectual
society and of the idea of a political career. That such a man
should be at the same time fond of Flora Saunt attested, as the
phrase in the first volume of Gibbon has it, the variety of his
inclinations. I was soon to learn that he was fonder of her than
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