| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Blix by Frank Norris: You can't understand! How could a girl understand the power of it?
Other things, I don't say; but when it comes to gambling, there
seems to be another me that does precisely as he chooses, whether
I will or not. But I'm going to do my best. I haven't played
since, although there was plenty of chance. You see, this card
business is only a part of this club life, this city life--like
drinking and--other vices of men. If I didn't have to lead the
life, or if I didn't go with that crowd--Sargeant and the rest of
those men--it would be different; easier, maybe."
"But a man ought to be strong enough to be himself and master of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: the common miseries, and we have the additional sorrow, which is wholly
ours, that we have lost the merit and good fame of Marcius, and see his
person confined, rather than protected, by the arms of the enemy. Yet I
account this the greatest of all misfortunes, if indeed the affairs of
Rome be sunk to so feeble a state as to have their last dependence upon
us. For it is hardly imaginable he should have any consideration left
for us, when he has no regard for the country which he was wont to
prefer before his mother and wife and children. Make use, however, of
our service; and lead us, if you please, to him; we are able, if nothing
more, at least to spend our last breath in making suit to him for our
country."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: that, in the horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of
incipient disease, he, who was doing so much more than he had
sworn, failed in the letter of his priestly oath - he, who was so
much a better man than either you or me, who did what we have never
dreamed of daring - he too tasted of our common frailty. "O, Iago,
the pity of it!" The least tender should be moved to tears; the
most incredulous to prayer. And all that you could do was to pen
your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage!
Is it growing at all clear to you what a picture you have drawn of
your own heart? I will try yet once again to make it clearer. You
had a father: suppose this tale were about him, and some informant
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