| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll: as he hobbled back to his tree, `and it'll let YOU alone, you know.'
At this moment the door was flung open, and a shrill voice was
heard singing:
`To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said,
"I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head;
Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be,
Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me."'
And hundreds of voices joined in the chorus:
`Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can,
And sprinkle the table with buttons and bran:
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea--
 Through the Looking-Glass |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: which, though timed to explode in ten days, had not done so for
something like three months. It was quite true that when it did go
off, it merely succeeded in blowing a housemaid to atoms, the
Governor having gone out of town six weeks before, but at least it
showed that dynamite, as a destructive force, was, when under the
control of machinery, a powerful, though a somewhat unpunctual
agent. Lord Arthur was a little consoled by this reflection, but
even here he was destined to disappointment, for two days
afterwards, as he was going upstairs, the Duchess called him into
her boudoir, and showed him a letter she had just received from the
Deanery.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: foresight.
After he had begun to haunt my studio Miss Saunt quite gave it up,
and I finally learned that she accused me of conspiring with him to
put pressure on her to marry him. She didn't know I would take it
that way, else she would never have brought him to see me. It was
in her view a part of the conspiracy that to show him a kindness I
asked him at last to sit to me. I dare say moreover she was
disgusted to hear that I had ended by attempting almost as many
sketches of his beauty as I had attempted of hers. What was the
value of tributes to beauty by a hand that could so abase itself?
My relation to poor Dawling's want of modelling was simple enough.
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