| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: last time Thursdale ever allowed himself to be encumbered with
the debris of a feast. He thus incidentally learned that the
privilege of loving her is one of the least favors that a
charming woman can accord; and in seeking to avoid the pitfalls
of sentiment he had developed a science of evasion in which the
woman of the moment became a mere implement of the game. He owed
a great deal of delicate enjoyment to the cultivation of this
art. The perils from which it had been his refuge became naively
harmless: was it possible that he who now took his easy way along
the levels had once preferred to gasp on the raw heights of
emotion? Youth is a high-colored season; but he had the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: with the glanders and like to mose in the chine; troubled with
the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped
with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives,
stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in
the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before, and with a
half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep's leather, which,
being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often
burst, and now repaired with knots; one girth six times pieced,
and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her
name fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with
pack-thread.
 The Taming of the Shrew |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: a formula?'
'Look here, Judy,' I said, 'you know me very well. What if the
flesh leaps with the spirit?'
She looked at me, very white. 'Oh no,' she said, 'no.'
I waited, but there seemed nothing more that she could say; and in
the silence the futile negative seemed to wander round the room
repeating itself like an echo, 'Oh no, no.' I poked the fire
presently to drown the sound of it. Judy sat still, with her feet
crossed and her hands thrust into the pockets of her coat, staring
into the coals.
'Can you live independently, satisfied with your interests and
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