| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: the speculative improvements in which provincials sooner or later
engage (compelled thereto by the necessity of establishing their
children), he soon felt the need of that variety of distractions a
habit of which becomes at last the very life of a Parisian. A name to
preserve, property to transmit to heirs, social relations to be
created by a household where the principal families of the
neighborhood could assemble, and a weariness of all irregular
connections, were not, however, the determining reasons of his
matrimonial desires. From the time he first returned to the provinces
he had been secretly in love with the queen of Bordeaux, the great
beauty, Mademoiselle Evangelista.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: told me, a miner. I asked my stock question in such cases,
whether he would go back to the old work after the war. He said
he would, and then added--with the events of overnight on his
mind: "If A'hm looky."
Followed a little silence. Then I tried my second stock remark
for such cases. One does not talk to soldiers at the front in
this war of Glory or the "Empire on which the sun never sets" or
"the meteor flag of England" or of King and Country or any of
those fine old headline things. On the desolate path that winds
about amidst the shell craters and the fragments and the red-
rusted wire, with the silken shiver of passing shells in the air
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: their talk, certain strongly accentuated snores, made the more
sonorous by the thin planks of the loft in which she had ensconced
herself, made the guests laugh and also the husband. Towards midnight,
when nothing remained on the table but biscuits, cheese, dried fruit,
and good wine, the guests, chiefly the young Frenchmen, became
communicative. The latter talked of their homes, their studies, and of
the war. The conversation grew lively. Prosper Magnan brought a few
tears to the merchant's eyes, when with the frankness and naivete of a
good and tender nature, he talked of what his mother must be doing at
that hour, while he was sitting drinking on the banks of the Rhine.
"I can see her," he said, "reading her prayers before she goes to bed.
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