| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: the finest light cavalry in the world. And equal to them--superior
even, if we recollect that they preserved their country's freedom
for centuries against the superior force of England--were those
troops of Scots who, century after century, swept across the border
on their little garrons, their bag of oatmeal hanging by the saddle,
with the iron griddle whereon to bake it; careless of weather and of
danger; men too swift to be exterminated, too independent to be
enslaved.
But if horsemanship had, in these cases, a levelling tendency it
would have the very opposite when a riding tribe conquered a non-
riding one. The conquerors would, as much as possible, keep the art
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: When the dance was over, the young man wrapped her in a cashmere shawl
with a lover's care, and seated her in a place sheltered from the
wind. Very soon Mademoiselle de Fontaine, seeing them rise and walk
round the place as if preparing to leave, found means to follow them
under pretence of admiring the views from the garden. Her brother lent
himself with malicious good-humor to the divagations of her rather
eccentric wanderings. Emilie then saw the attractive couple get into
an elegant tilbury, by which stood a mounted groom in livery. At the
moment when, from his high seat, the young man was drawing the reins
even, she caught a glance from his eye such as a man casts aimlessly
at the crowd; and then she enjoyed the feeble satisfaction of seeing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Purse by Honore de Balzac: with such effrontery, that Hippolyte no longer felt a doubt as to
his neighbors' morals. He stood still on the stairs, and got down
with some difficulty; his knees shook, he felt dizzy, he was in a
cold sweat, he shivered, and found himself unable to walk,
struggling, as he was, with the agonizing shock caused by the
destruction of all his hopes. And at this moment he found lurking
in his memory a number of observations, trifling in themselves,
but which corroborated his frightful suspicions, and which, by
proving the certainty of this last incident, opened his eyes as
to the character and life of these two women.
Had they really waited till the portrait was given them before
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