| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: And with those farewell words, the fair Marquise left her rival to
make the tour of the modern Pays du Tendre; which, by the way, is not
so absurd a conception as some appear to think. New maps of the
country are engraved for each generation; and if the names of the
routes are different, they still lead to the same capital city.
In the course of an hour's tete-a-tete, on a corner sofa, under the
eyes of the world, the Duchess brought young d'Esgrignon as far as
Scipio's Generosity, the Devotion of Amadis, and Chivalrous Self-
abnegation (for the Middle Ages were just coming into fashion, with
their daggers, machicolations, hauberks, chain-mail, peaked shoes, and
romantic painted card-board properties). She had an admirable turn,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: splendid lobster and a crab fastened to a string which the fisherman
was dangling in his right hand, while with the left he held his tackle
and his net.
We accosted him with the intention of buying his haul,--an idea which
came to us both, and was expressed in a smile, to which I responded by
a slight pressure of the arm I held and drew toward my heart. It was
one of those nothings of which memory makes poems when we sit by the
fire and recall the hour when that nothing moved us, and the place
where it did so,--a mirage the effects of which have never been noted
down, though it appears on the objects that surround us in moments
when life sits lightly and our hearts are full. The loveliest scenery
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: witness of their common origin; but at the same time they
differed from all other known races of men: *g they were neither
white like the Europeans, nor yellow like most of the Asiatics,
nor black like the negroes. Their skin was reddish brown, their
hair long and shining, their lips thin, and their cheekbones very
prominent. The languages spoken by the North American tribes are
various as far as regarded their words, but they were subject to
the same grammatical rules. These rules differed in several
points from such as had been observed to govern the origin of
language. The idiom of the Americans seemed to be the product of
new combinations, and bespoke an effort of the understanding of
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