| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: fairs, resteth in the good choice of persons. Neither
is it enough, to consult concerning persons secun-
dum genera, as in an idea, or mathematical de-
scription, what the kind and character of the
person should be; for the greatest errors are com-
mitted, and the most judgment is shown, in the
choice of individuals. It was truly said, optimi con-
siliarii mortui: books will speak plain, when coun-
sellors blanch.Therefore it is good to be conversant
in them, specially the books of such as themselves
have been actors upon the stage.
Essays of Francis Bacon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: Now, a time for a young woman to laugh is when she
has made sure of a good rich husband. Now, a time
to cry, according to you, Mary, is when she is making
choice of him; but I should think that a young
woman's time to cry was when she despaired of
getting one. Why, there was your mother, now: to be
sure, when I popp'd the question to her she did look
a little silly; but when she had once looked down on
her apron-strings, as all modest young women us'd to
do, and drawled out ye-s, she was as brisk and as
merry as a bee.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: splendid but a little untidy in black silk and red beads, with dark
eyes that had no depths, with a clear hard voice that had an almost
visible prominence, aquiline features and straight black hair that
was apt to get astray, that was now astray like the head feathers of
an eagle in a gale. She stood with her hands behind her back, and
talked in a high tenor of a projected Town Planning Bill with Blupp,
who was practically in those days the secretary of the local
Government Board. A very short broad man with thick ears and fat
white hands writhing intertwined behind him, stood with his back to
us, eager to bark interruptions into Altiora's discourse. A slender
girl in pale blue, manifestly a young political wife, stood with one
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