| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dust by Mr. And Mrs. Haldeman-Julius: few such pledges of help kept when he was obliged actually to
hire men, had established for him an enviable reputation, which
Martin was of no mind to lose. Had Rose not released him from his
promise he would have kept it. Even now he was disturbed as to
what Fletcher and Fallon might think. But already he had lived
long enough with his wife to understand something of the quality
of her pride. Once having agreed to the change, she would carry
it off with a dash.
Had Rose stood her ground on this matter, undoubtedly all her
after life might have been different, but she was of those women
whose charm and whose folly lie in their sensitiveness to the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: from a domestic desire to live as they liked, with their elbows on the
table, and to take their ease under the projecting roofs of their own
porches.
The consciousness of well-being and the spirit of independence which
comes of prosperity begot in Flanders, sooner than elsewhere, that
craving for liberty which, later, permeated all Europe. Thus the
compactness of their ideas, and the tenacity which education grafted
on their nature made the Flemish people a formidable body of men in
the defence of their rights. Among them nothing is half-done,--neither
houses, furniture, dikes, husbandry, nor revolutions; and they hold a
monopoly of all that they undertake. The manufacture of linen, and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: all liked him; but, in spite of the confidence he now inspired in
them, he never asked to see Juana, or to have the door of her
mysterious hiding-place opened to him. The young girl, hungry to see
her lover, implored him to do so; but he always refused her from an
instinct of prudence. Besides, he had used his best powers and
fascinations to lull the suspicions of the old couple, and had now
accustomed them to see him, a soldier, stay in bed till midday on
pretence that he was ill. Thus the lovers lived only in the night-
time, when the rest of the household were asleep. If Montefiore had
not been one of those libertines whom the habit of gallantry enables
to retain their self-possession under all circumstances, he might have
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