| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: her nose. At last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is
growing cross, shut Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate
the verb "I love" twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it
was a chorus which both troupe and orchestra performed with great
brilliancy. But the curtain once down, the clappers tried in vain
to obtain a call, while the whole house was already up and making
for the doors.
The crowd trampled and jostled, jammed, as it were, between the rows
of seats, and in so doing exchanged expressions. One phrase only
went round:
"It's idiotic." A critic was saying that it would be one's duty to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: freer thing for us, because we passed it hand in hand, than if we had
passed through it alone,' it has failed? Do you care for him enough to
live for him, not tomorrow, but when he is an old, faded man, and you an
old, faded woman? Can you forgive him his sins and his weaknesses, when
they hurt you most? If he were to lie a querulous invalid for twenty
years, would you be able to fold him in your arms all that time, and
comfort him, as a mother comforts her little child?" The woman drew her
breath heavily.
"Oh, I love him absolutely! I would be glad to die, if only I could once
know that he loved me better than anything in the world!"
The woman stood looking down at her. "Have you never thought of that other
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: hour, and so far from the Rue Saint-Lazare. Allow me to have the honor
of giving you my arm.--The pavement is so greasy this morning, that if
we do not hold each other up," he added, to soothe the elder man's
susceptibilities, "we shall find it hard to escape a tumble."
"But, my dear sir, I am no more than fifty-five, unfortunately for
me," replied the Comte de Granville. "A physician of your celebrity
must know that at that age a man is still hale and strong."
"Then you are in waiting on a lady, I suppose," replied Horace
Bianchon. "You are not, I imagine, in the habit of going about Paris
on foot. When a man keeps such fine horses----"
"Still, when I am not visiting in the evening, I commonly return from
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