| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: attempts to regulate human ties. Strefford, too, had his home
in this world, but only one of his homes. The other, the one he
spoke of, and probably thought of, least often, was a great dull
English country-house in a northern county, where a life as
monotonous and self-contained as his own was chequered and
dispersed had gone on for generation after generation; and it
was the sense of that house, and of all it typified even to his
vagrancy and irreverence, which, coming out now and then in his
talk, or in his attitude toward something or somebody, gave him
a firmer outline and a steadier footing than the other
marionettes in the dance. Superficially so like them all, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: the Germans made their great rush upon Paris and it seemed that
France was down, France and the whole fabric of liberal
civilization. He emerged from these stunning apprehensions after
the Battle of the Marne, to find himself busy upon a score of
dispersed and disconnected war jobs, and trying to get all the
new appearances and forces and urgencies of the war into
relations with himself. One thing became very vivid indeed, that
he wasn't being used in any real and effective way in the war.
There was a mighty going to and fro upon Red Cross work and
various war committees, a vast preparation for wounded men and
for the succour of dislocated families; a preparation, that
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: for the occasion, in which he looked like a best man at a wedding,
asked Lucien for his order.
"I have no order."
"Then you cannot go in," said the man at the box office drily.
"But I belong to Mme. d'Espard's party."
"It is not our business to know that," said the man, who could not
help exchanging a barely perceptible smile with his colleague.
A carriage stopped under the peristyle as he spoke. A chasseur, in a
livery which Lucien did not recognize, let down the step, and two
women in evening dress came out of the brougham. Lucien had no mind to
lay himself open to an insolent order to get out of the way from the
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