| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: hiding-place discovered by Michu was known only to him and his wife,
and to Laurence and the four gentlemen. We may judge of the effect in
the courtroom when the public prosecutor made known the fact that this
cavern, known only to the accused and to their two witnesses, was the
place where the senator had been imprisoned.
Marthe was summoned. Her appearance caused much excitement among the
spectators and keen anxiety to the prisoners. Monsieur de Grandville
rose to protest against the testimony of a wife against her husband.
The public prosecutor replied that Marthe by her own confession was an
accomplice in the outrage; that she had neither sworn nor testified,
and was to be heard solely in the interests of truth.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: forty-two years old, and a distinguished savant; so they excused him
his three years' undergraduate's career, and invested him at once
with the red gown of the bachelors. That red gown--or, rather, the
ragged phantom of it--is still shown at Montpellier, and must be
worn by each bachelor when he takes his degree. Unfortunately,
antiquarians assure us that the precious garment has been renewed
again and again--the students having clipped bits of it away for
relics, and clipped as earnestly from the new gowns as their
predecessors had done from the authentic original.
Doubtless, the coming of such a man among them to lecture on the
Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the Ars Parva of Galen, not from the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: loving face.
A moment or so more and she had come round from the opposite side
of the fire pile, and bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed
it quietly, solemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her
crest rose erect: it was the lioness protecting her young. She
stretched forth her arm from the black mantle, athwart the pale
front that now again bent over the caldron--stretched it toward the
haunted and hollow-sounding space beyond, in the gesture of one
whose right hand has the sway of the scepter. And then her voice
stole on the air in the music of a chant, not loud yet far-
reaching; so thrilling, so sweet and yet so solemn that I could at
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