| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: with his pen behind his ear; he hardly listened to her, he was so full
of business. The formidable symptoms of stock-taking were visible all
round him; he begged her to excuse him. She was received coldly enough
by her sister, who owed her a grudge. In fact, Augustine, in her
finery, and stepping out of a handsome carriage, had never been to see
her but when passing by. The wife of the prudent Lebas, imagining that
want of money was the prime cause of this early call, tried to keep up
a tone of reserve which more than once made Augustine smile. The
painter's wife perceived that, apart from the cap and lappets, her
mother had found in Virginie a successor who could uphold the ancient
honor of the Cat and Racket. At breakfast she observed certain changes
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: first importance to him, or else of withdrawing with such hurt to
his dignity as must impair his authority in the countryside
hereafter.
Be it so or otherwise, the fact remains that he stopped short;
then, with an incoherent ejaculation, between anger and contempt,
he tossed his arms, turned on his heel and strode off quickly with
his cousin.
When the landlord and his people came, they found Andre-Louis, his
arms about the body of his dead friend, murmuring passionately into
the deaf ear that rested almost against his lips:
"Philippe! Speak to me, Philippe! Philippe... Don't you hear me?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: An answer in Cantonese sing-song came back from the junk, and the
speaker gestured toward the outside ocean.
Then a long parleying began. For upward of half an hour Moran and
Wilbur listened to a proposition in broken pigeon English made by
the beach-combers again and again and yet again, and were in no
way enlightened. It was impossible to understand. Then at last
they made out that there was question of a whale. Next it
appeared the whale was dead; and finally, after a prolonged
pantomime of gesturing and pointing, Moran guessed that the beach-
combers wanted the use of the "Bertha Millner" to trice up the
dead leviathan while the oil and whalebone were extracted.
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