| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac: each exclamation added a link. Such compassion arising in the heart of
the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old spinster, had something
inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel pity, recalling, as it
did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old cooper, was for
Nanon the sum total of happiness. Who does not likewise say, "Poor
Nanon!" God will recognize his angels by the inflexions of their
voices and by their secret sighs.
There were very many households in Saumur where the servants were
better treated, but where the masters received far less satisfaction
in return. Thus it was often said: "What have the Grandets ever done
to make their Grande Nanon so attached to them? She would go through
 Eugenie Grandet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: #STARTMARK#
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: their children, cast her motherliness about the girl,--yet without
disregarding the commands of her husband, who distrusted female
intimacies. Those commands were brief. "If any man, of any age, or any
rank," Dumay said, "speaks to Modeste, ogles her, makes love to her,
he is a dead man. I'll blow his brains out and give myself to the
authorities; my death may save her. If you don't wish to see my head
cut off, do you take my place in watching her when I am obliged to go
out."
For the last three years Dumay had examined his pistols every night.
He seemed to have put half the burden of his oath upon the Pyrenean
hounds, two animals of uncommon sagacity. One slept inside the Chalet,
 Modeste Mignon |