| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: moment of irritation against the petty restrictions that thwarted
every impulse. It was ridiculous to give up the opera, not
because one might possibly be bored there, but because one must
pay for the experiment.
In his sitting-room, the tacit connivance of the inanimate had
centred the lamp-light on a photograph of Alexa Trent, placed, in
the obligatory silver frame, just where, as memory officiously
reminded him, Margaret Aubyn's picture had long throned in its
stead. Miss Trent's features cruelly justified the usurpation.
She had the kind of beauty that comes of a happy accord of face
and spirit. It is not given to many to have the lips and eyes of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: fanciful, and like your dreams. My dear child, as your eyes open
to the true fairy tale which Madam How can tell you all day long,
nursery stories will seem to you poor and dull. All those
feelings in you which your nursery tales call out,--imagination,
wonder, awe, pity, and I trust too, hope and love--will be called
out, I believe, by the Tale of all Tales, the true "Marchen allen
Marchen," so much more fully and strongly and purely, that you
will feel that novels and story-books are scarcely worth your
reading, as long as you can read the great green book, of which
every bud is a letter, and every tree a page.
Wonder if you will. You cannot wonder too much. That you might
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: down into that city to make discoveries; for one must needs descend
too low into its depths to see the wonderful scenes of tragedy or
comedy enacted there, the masterpieces brought forth by chance.
I do not know how it is that I have kept the following story so long
untold. It is one of the curious things that stop in the bag from
which Memory draws out stories at haphazard, like numbers in a
lottery. There are plenty of tales just as strange and just as well
hidden still left; but some day, you may be sure, their turn will
come.
One day my charwoman, a working man's wife, came to beg me to honor
her sister's wedding with my presence. If you are to realize what this
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