| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: a letter like what is written to real people in this world - I am
still flesh and blood - I should enjoy it. Simpson did, the other
day, and it did me as much good as a bottle of wine. A lonely man
gets to feel like a pariah after awhile - or no, not that, but like
a saint and martyr, or a kind of macerated clergyman with pebbles
in his boots, a pillared Simeon, I'm damned if I know what, but,
man alive, I want gossip.
My health is better, my spirits steadier, I am not the least cast
down. If THE EMIGRANT was a failure, the PAVILION, by your leave,
was not: it was a story quite adequately and rightly done, I
contend; and when I find Stephen, for whom certainly I did not mean
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: the devil,
six years ago; and I'll be damned if I don't help him to the best
of
my ability now."
John Weightman looked at his son steadily. "Harold," he said at
last,
"you know I dislike violent language, and it never has any
influence with me. If I could honestly approve of this
proposition of yours, I'd let you have the money; but I can't;
it's extravagant and useless. But you have your Christmas check
for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: overstated. A large proportion, therefore, of your parish work
will be to influence the men of your family to do their duty by
their dependants. You wish to cure the evils under which they
labour. The greater proportion of these are in the hands of your
men relatives. It is a mockery, for instance, in you to visit the
fever-stricken cottage, while your husband leaves it in a state
which breeds that fever. Your business is to go to him and say,
"HERE IS A WRONG; RIGHT IT!" This, as many a beautiful Middle Age
legend tells us, has been woman's function in all uncivilised
times; not merely to melt man's heart to pity, but to awaken it to
duty. But the man must see that the woman is in earnest: that if
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