| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: The ascetic, stainless priest in him stood off and looked
at this dog of the gutter with his obscene talk, and then
came defeat of soul and body.
"I give up!" he said quietly. "I'll never try again."
He wandered unconsciously to the ferry and, having his
yearly book of tickets in his pocket, took the train for
home from force of habit. He left the cars at a
station several miles from Weir, and wandered across the
country. Just at sundown, covered with mud and weak from
hunger and drunkenness, he crossed the lawn before Lucy's
house and, looking up, saw her.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: judge that the religious feature has been pretty well knocked out of it now.
Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl and rosary,
and he will stay. His medieval business, supplemented by the monsters and
the oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-land, is finer to look
at than the poor fantastic inventions and performances of the reveling rabble
of the priest's day, and serves quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize the day
and admonish men that the grace-line between the worldly season and the holy
one is reached.
This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive possession of New
Orleans until recently. But now it has spread to Memphis and
St. Louis and Baltimore. It has probably reached its limit.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: but how to oblige him, could now have so far changed his sentiments
as to take away my life.
The letters which I received by my servant, and the assurances he
gave that I need fear nothing, for that I was never mentioned by the
viceroy without great marks of esteem, so far confirmed me in my
error, that I went from Fremona with a resolution to see him. I did
not reflect that a man who could fail in his duty to his King, his
father-in-law, and his benefactor, might, without scruple, do the
same to a stranger, though distinguished as his friend; and thus
sanguine and unsuspecting continued my journey, still receiving
intimation from all parts to take care of myself. At length, when I
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