| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: spectacles. He is much thought of by the old women, who
consider him a kind of conjurer, because he has two of three
stuffed alligators hanging up in his shop, and several snakes in
bottles. He is a great reader of almanacs and newspapers, and
is much given to pore over alarming accounts of plots,
conspiracies, fires, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions; which
last phenomena he considers as signs of the times. He has
always some dismal tale of the kind to deal out to his customers,
with their doses; and thus at the same time puts both soul and
body into an uproar. He is a great believer in omens and
predictions; and has the prophecies of Robert Nixon and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: stealing out at night from the palace of Claudius."
"Theodore!" said a faint voice.
"I will kill her!"
"My dear----"
"She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he rides
well----"
"Theodore!"
"Let me be!" said the painter in a tone almost like a roar.
It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the end the frenzy
of passion prompted the artist to acts and words which any woman not
so young as Augustine would have ascribed to madness.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how
the human soul--held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length--
had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.
The face that was close to mine was as white as the face against
the glass, and out of it presently came a sound, not low nor weak,
but as if from much further away, that I drank like a waft of fragrance.
"Yes--I took it."
At this, with a moan of joy, I enfolded, I drew him close;
and while I held him to my breast, where I could feel in the sudden
fever of his little body the tremendous pulse of his little heart,
I kept my eyes on the thing at the window and saw it move and shift
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