| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: Next day we traveled among and over mountains. Our
path, so narrow, climbed by rock and tree. Now it overhung
deep, tree-crammed vales, now it bore through just-
parted cliffs. Beltran and Juan Lepe had need for all their
strength of body.
The worst was that that old tremor and weakness of one
leg and side, left after some sea fight, which had made Beltran
the cook from Beltran the mariner, came back. I saw his
step begin to halt and drag. This increased. An hour later,
the path going over tree roots knotted like serpents, he
stumbled and fell. He picked himself up. ``Hard to keep
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: keep a woman of the countess's position waiting, she hastily threw on
a shawl and wrapper.
"My visit concerns a charitable action, madame," said the countess,
"or I would not disturb you at so early an hour."
"But I am only too happy to be disturbed," said the banker's wife,
taking the notes and the countess's guarantee. She rang for her maid.
"Therese," she said, "tell the cashier to bring me up himself,
immediately, forty thousand francs."
Then she locked into a table drawer the guarantee given by Madame de
Vandenesse, after sealing it up.
"You have a delightful room," said the countess.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: always shock each other both in life and art; we cannot get the sun
into our pictures, nor the abstract right (if there be such a
thing) into our books; enough if, in the one, there glimmer some
hint of the great light that blinds us from heaven; enough if, in
the other, there shine, even upon foul details, a spirit of
magnanimity. I would scarce send to the VICOMTE a reader who was
in quest of what we may call puritan morality. The ventripotent
mulatto, the great cater, worker, earner and waster, the man of
much and witty laughter, the man of the great heart and alas! of
the doubtful honesty, is a figure not yet clearly set before the
world; he still awaits a sober and yet genial portrait; but with
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