| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: aware of the fact that she had been the wife of an emperor, and
was the mother of the heir, of a decaying house. Of the 218 years
that her dynasty had been in power, 120 had been occupied by the
reigns of two emperors, and only seven monarchs had sat upon the
throne, a smaller number than ever ruled during the same period
in all Chinese history. These two Emperors, Kang Hsi and Chien
Lung, the second and fourth, had each reigned for sixty years,
the most brilliant period of the "Great Pure Dynasty," unless we
except the last six years of the Empress Dowager's regency. The
other ninety-eight years saw five rulers rise and pass away,
each one becoming weaker than his predecessor both in character
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: And tugged and strained his chain o' gowd,
All for to bite the man.
"O hush thee, gentle popinjay!
O hush thee, doggie dear!
There is a word I fain wad say,
It needeth he should hear!"
Aye louder screamed that ladye fair
To drown her doggie's bark:
Ever the lover shouted mair
To make that ladye hark:
Shrill and more shrill the popinjay
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: senseless outcry; and the mortal sweetness of loving him
became again the one real fact in the world.
XXXIX
Anna, the next day, woke to a humiliated memory of the
previous evening.
Darrow had been right in saying that their sacrifice would
benefit no one; yet she seemed dimly to discern that there
were obligations not to be tested by that standard. She
owed it, at any rate, as much to his pride as to hers to
abstain from the repetition of such scenes; and she had
learned that it was beyond her power to do so while they
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