| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: 'My dear Lady Clem, I never have a moment to myself,' said Lord
Arthur, smiling.
'I suppose you mean that you go about all day long with Miss Sybil
Merton, buying CHIFFONS and talking nonsense? I cannot understand
why people make such a fuss about being married. In my day we
never dreamed of billing and cooing in public, or in private for
that matter.'
'I assure you I have not seen Sybil for twenty-four hours, Lady
Clem. As far as I can make out, she belongs entirely to her
milliners.'
'Of course; that is the only reason you come to see an ugly old
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: what has happened, can we understand what will happen; only by
understanding history, can we understand prophecy; and that not merely
by picking out--too often arbitrarily and unfairly--a few names and
dates from the records of all the ages, but by trying to discover its
organic laws, and the causes which produce in nations, creeds, and
systems, health and disease, growth, change, decay and death. If, in
one small corner of this vast field, I shall have thrown a single ray of
light upon these subjects--if I shall have done anything in these pages
towards illustrating the pathology of a single people, I shall believe
that I have done better service to the Catholic Faith and the
Scriptures, than if I did really "know the times and the seasons, which
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: consciously as he would have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage
had had of old but too little to say to the matter: for the girl
who was to have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace.
She had died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been
fixed, and he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that
promised to fill his life to the brim.
Of that benediction, however, it would have been false to say this
life could really be emptied: it was still ruled by a pale ghost,
still ordered by a sovereign presence. He had not been a man of
numerous passions, and even in all these years no sense had grown
stronger with him than the sense of being bereft. He had needed no
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