| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: Her observation, acutely exercised here, had suggested to her that
a woman's first duty is not to be beautiful, but to be pleasing,
and she encountered so many women who pleased without beauty
that she began to feel that she had discovered her mission.
She had once heard an enthusiastic musician, out of patience
with a gifted bungler, declare that a fine voice is really
an obstacle to singing properly; and it occurred to her
that it might perhaps be equally true that a beautiful face
is an obstacle to the acquisition of charming manners.
Mrs. Tristram, then, undertook to be exquisitely agreeable,
and she brought to the task a really touching devotion.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: as a preventive measure, and as a satisfaction for the injured
party, in the same cases where the payment of damages is the
principal retribution.
There remains the conditional sentence. A judge may decide, in
the case of first offenders who appear to him to call for such
treatment, that the sentence or the execution of the sentence,
shall be suspended for a given period, after which, if the
offender has been of good behaviour, and has not committed another
offence, the sentence is effaced and the condemnation is regarded
as non-existent; whilst in the other case the sentence takes
effect, and the punishment is added to that of the new crime.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: match for Sir Bargle. If they used the word then, I would have to
exaggerate only slightly to say that Sir Bargle was, as they say in
French, or maybe don't, a jerque. He punctuated nearly every
sentence with an oath or a belch, constantly leered at the ladies
in waiting (who knew all too well to keep a safe distance from him),
and those who attended carefully to his speech noted that the word
he used more than any other was "me." In a word (or fourteen,
actually), Sir Bargle was a man unlikely to put his personal
appetites in second place. The prospect of this knight nuzzling
the hair or nibbling the earlobes of Jennifrella was in itself
sufficiently revulsive to Sir Philo; the prospect of his becoming
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