| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: of the frailty of the body.
"Is it true, Terence," she demanded, "that women die with bugs
crawling across their faces?"
"I think it's very probable," he said. "But you must admit,
Rachel, that we so seldom think of anything but ourselves
that an occasional twinge is really rather pleasant."
Accusing him of an affection of cynicism which was just as bad as
sentimentality itself, she left her position by his side and knelt upon
the window sill, twisting the curtain tassels between her fingers.
A vague sense of dissatisfaction filled her.
"What's so detestable in this country," she exclaimed, "is the blue--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Buttered Side Down by Edna Ferber: waved him away.
"It's all right, Gabie. I don't blubber as a rule. This
fever leaves you as weak as a rag, and ready to cry if any one says
`Boo!' I've been doing some high-pressure thinking since nursie
left. Had plenty of time to do it in, sitting here by this window
all day. My land! I never knew there was so much time. There's
been days when I haven't talked to a soul, except the nurse and the
chambermaid. Lonesome! Say, the amount of petting I could stand
would surprise you. Of course, my nurse was a perfectly good
nurse--at twenty-five per. But I was just a case to her. You
can't expect a nurse to ooze sympathy over an old maid with the
 Buttered Side Down |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: apparently with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like
fluid, so that a pale, lambent flame followed the course of the rod
as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played,
and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native
fable talk, we call the "Fairy's ring," but yet more visible
because marked in phosphorescent light. On the ring thus formed
were placed twelve small lamps, fed with the fluid from the same
vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The light emitted by the
lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that which circled round
the ring.
Within the circumference, and immediately round the woodpile,
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