| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: seen in my room, and which is to me the most precious thing
there. Though enchanted with my first success, never did the
least sign, the least word, escape him which might imply, 'This
man owes all to me!' And yet, but for him, I should have died of
want; he had eaten bread rubbed with garlic that I might have
coffee to enable me to sit up at night.
"He fell ill. As you may suppose, I passed my nights by his
bedside, and the first time I pulled him through; but two years
after he had a relapse; in spite of the utmost care, in spite of
the greatest exertions of science, he succumbed. No king was ever
nursed as he was. Yes, Bianchon, to snatch that man from death I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: this handwriting?"
Miss Roemer read the few lines hastily and her voice trembled as
she said: "This is John's handwriting. I know it well. This is
the letter that was found on the table?"
"Yes, this letter appears to be the last he had written in life.
Do you know to whom it could have been written? The envelope, as
I suppose you know from the newspaper reports, was not addressed.
Do you know of any friends with whom he could have been on terms
of sufficient intimacy to write such a letter? Do you know what
these plans for the future could have been? It would certainly be
natural that he should have spoken to you first about them."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: keen brilliancy of Monsieur Lecoq. Muller is a small, slight,
plain-looking man, of indefinite age, and of much humbleness of
mien. A naturally retiring, modest disposition, and two external
causes are the reasons for Muller's humbleness of manner, which
is his chief characteristic. One cause is the fact that in early
youth a miscarriage of justice gave him several years in prison,
an experience which cast a stigma on his name and which made it
impossible for him, for many years after, to obtain honest
employment. But the world is richer, and safer, by Muller's
early misfortune. For it was this experience which threw him
back on his own peculiar talents for a livelihood, and drove him
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