| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: agitated ladies clutched my arm and said:
"I want a table for three," or "When does the train go to Poughkeepsie? "
Just as we in America have regular people to attend to these things, so
do they in England; and as the English respect each other's right to
privacy very much more than we do, they resent invasions of it very much
more than we do. But, let me say again, they are likely to mind it only
in somebody they think knows the rules. With those who don't know them it
is different. I say this with all the more certainty because of a fairly
recent afternoon spent in an English garden with English friends. The
question of pronunciation came up. Now you will readily see that with
them and their compactness, their great public schools, their two great
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: brandy and soda. - Ever yours,
R. L. S.
Letter: TO CHARLES BAXTER
608 BUSH STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, JAN. 26, '80
MY DEAR CHARLES, - I have to drop from a 50 cent. to a 25 cent.
dinner; to-day begins my fall. That brings down my outlay in food
and drink to 45 cents., or 1s. 10 and a half d. per day. How are
the mighty fallen! Luckily, this is such a cheap place for food; I
used to pay as much as that for my first breakfast in the Savile in
the grand old palmy days of yore. I regret nothing, and do not
even dislike these straits, though the flesh will rebel on
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Happily he cannot pray without the book--
I think him no divine extemporall--,
Then render back this common place of prayer,
To do himself good in adversity;
Beside he knows not my sins' quality,
And therefore knows no prayers for my avail;
Ere night his prayer may be to pray to God,
To put it in my heart to hear his prayer.
So tell the courtly wanton, and be gone.
HERALD.
I go.
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