| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan by Honore de Balzac: writing. The conversation began in a commonplace manner: the weather,
the ministry, de Marsay's illness, the hopes of the legitimists.
D'Arthez was an absolutist; the princess could not be ignorant of the
opinions of a man who sat in the Chamber among the fifteen or twenty
persons who represented the legitimist party; she found means to tell
him how she had fooled de Marsay to the top of his bent, then, by an
easy transition to the royal family and to "Madame," and the devotion
of the Prince de Cadignan to their service, she drew d'Arthez's
attention to the prince:--
"There is this to be said for him: he loved his masters, and was
faithful to them. His public character consoles me for the sufferings
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: happened (as there should happen in stories and must happen on the
stage).
Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world's output
of mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a
colored gentleman was outside to see Mr. Blandford Carteret.
"Bring him in," said Blandford, rising.
John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to Percival: "Ask
him to wait a few minutes outside. We'll let you know when to bring
him in."
Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, slow smiles that
was an inheritance of all the Carterets, and said:
 Options |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomena so
strangely interlaced that, taken together - which was how I had to
take them - they form as good an illustration as I can recall of
the manner in which, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate
sometimes deals with a man's avidity. These incidents certainly
had larger bearings than the comparatively meagre consequence we
are here concerned with - though I feel that consequence also a
thing to speak of with some respect. It's mainly in such a light,
I confess, at any rate, that the ugly fruit of my exile is at this
hour present to me. Even at first indeed the spirit in which my
avidity, as I have called it, made me regard that term owed no
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