| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: Paris, and a gold watch and chain, made up his apparel. In place of
the former Vinet, pale and thin, snarling and gloomy, the present
Vinet bore himself with the air and manner of a man of importance; he
marched boldly forward, certain of success, with that peculiar show of
security which belongs to lawyers who know the hidden places of the
law. His sly little head was well-brushed, his chin well-shaved, which
gave him a mincing though frigid look, that made him seem agreeable in
the style of Robespierre. Certainly he would make a fine attorney-
general, endowed with elastic, mischievous, and even murderous
eloquence, or an orator of the shrewd type of Benjamin Constant. The
bitterness and the hatred which formerly actuated him had now turned
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: The year 1825, so disastrous to many branches of industry and
commerce, did not spare the market of literature; and the sudden
ruin that fell on so many of the booksellers could scarcely have
been expected to leave unscathed one whose career had of
necessity connected him deeply and extensively with the pecuniary
transactions of that profession. In a word, almost without one
note of premonition, I found myself involved in the sweeping
catastrophe of the unhappy time, and called on to meet the
demands of creditors upon commercial establishments with which
my fortunes had long been bound up, to the extent of no less a
sum than one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: me, needful--things; but this book plan is the easiest and
needfullest, and would prove a considerable tonic to what we call
our British constitution, which has fallen dropsical of late, and
has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier feeding.
You have got its corn laws repealed for it; try if you cannot get
corn laws established for it, dealing in a better bread;--bread made
of that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens doors;-
-doors not of robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries.
LECTURE II.--LILIES OF QUEENS' GARDENS
"Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made cheerful,
and bloom as the lily; and the barren places of Jordan shall run
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