| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: that word, derived from a very distinguished etymologist who wishes
his name kept secret.
"Burgundian" is the name given, since the reign of Charles VI., to
those noisy detonations, the result of which is to fling upon the
carpet or the clothes a little coal or ember, the trifling nucleus of
a conflagration. Heat or fire releases, they say, a bubble of air left
in the heart of the wood by a gnawing worm. "Inde amor, inde
burgundus." We tremble when we see the structure we had so carefully
erected between the logs rolling down like an avalanche. Oh! to build
and stir and play with fire when we love is the material development
of our thoughts.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: mismated and unrelated; nothing in her talk ever matched anything
out of it. Lord Iffield was dying of love for her, but his family
was leading him a life. His mother, horrid woman, had told some
one that she would rather he should be swallowed by a tiger than
marry a girl not absolutely one of themselves. He had given his
young friend unmistakable signs, but was lying low, gaining time:
it was in his father's power to be, both in personal and in
pecuniary ways, excessively nasty to him. His father wouldn't last
for ever--quite the contrary; and he knew how thoroughly, in spite
of her youth, her beauty and the swarm of her admirers, some of
them positively threatening in their passion, he could trust her to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: abiding, wonderment possesses them. Here and there some
specially remarkable circumstance, such as a water-cart or a
guardsman, fairly penetrates into the seat of thought and
calls them, for half a moment, out of themselves; and you may
see them, still towed forward sideways by the inexorable nurse
as by a sort of destiny, but still staring at the bright
object in their wake. It may be some minutes before another
such moving spectacle reawakens them to the world in which
they dwell. For other children, they almost invariably show
some intelligent sympathy. "There is a fine fellow making mud
pies," they seem to say; "that I can understand, there is some
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