| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ursula by Honore de Balzac: deliver her over to Goupil's insults?--Answer!"
"How absurd you are, Monsieur Savinien," said Zelie, "to come and ask
us the meaning of a thing we think inexplicable. I bother myself as
little about Ursula as I do about the year one. Since Uncle Minoret
died I've not thought of her more than I do of my first tooth. I've
never said one word about her to Goupil, who is, moreover, a queer
rogue whom I wouldn't think of consulting about even a dog. Why don't
you speak up, Minoret? Are you going to let monsieur box your ears in
that way and accuse you of wickedness that's beneath you? As if a man
with forty-eight thousand francs a year from landed property, and a
castle fit for a prince, would stoop to such things! Get up, and don't
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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: But Madam How, who, whenever she makes an ugly desolate place,
always tries to cover over its ugliness, and set something green
to grow over it, and make it pretty once more, does so often and
often by her worn-out craters. I have seen them covered with
short sweet turf, like so many chalk downs. I have seen them,
too, filled with bushes, which held woodcocks and wild boars.
Once I came on a beautiful round crater on the top of a mountain,
which was filled at the bottom with a splendid crop of potatoes.
Though Madam How had not put them there herself, she had at least
taught the honest Germans to put them there. And often Madam How
turns her worn-out craters into beautiful lakes. There are many
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: the subject. All the world over, people are stowing away in coal-
holes and dark corners, and when ships are once out to sea, appearing
again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck. The career of these sea-
tramps partakes largely of the adventurous. They may be poisoned by
coal-gas, or die by starvation in their place of concealment; or when
found they may be clapped at once and ignominiously into irons, thus
to be carried to their promised land, the port of destination, and
alas! brought back in the same way to that from which they started,
and there delivered over to the magistrates and the seclusion of a
county jail. Since I crossed the Atlantic, one miserable stowaway
was found in a dying state among the fuel, uttered but a word or two,
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