| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: Parliament (which is as many as the City of London chooses), that,
I confess, seems a little scandalous; but to whom, is none of my
business to inquire.
Passing from hence, and ferrying over Foy River or the River Foweth
(call it as you please), we come into a large country without many
towns in it of note, but very well furnished with gentlemen's
seats, and a little higher up with tin-works.
The sea making several deep bays here, they who travel by land are
obliged to go higher into the country to pass above the water,
especially at Trewardreth Bay, which lies very broad, above ten
miles within the country, which passing at Trewardreth (a town of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss
Bart's future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant
tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could
get; but with the subject of dis cussion at his side,
turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood
her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance
by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear
that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of
honour, he was bound to do all he could to protect her from the
results of her disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by
the reflection that if she had married Gryce she would have been
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: by a song which recalls his fatherland. The contempt which the old man
affected to pour upon the noblest efforts of art, his wealth, his
manners, the respectful deference shown to him by Porbus, his work
guarded so secretly,--a work of patient toil, a work no doubt of
genius, judging by the head of the Virgin which Poussin had so naively
admired, and which, beautiful beside even the Adam of Mabuse, betrayed
the imperial touch of a great artist,--in short, everything about the
strange old man seemed beyond the limits of human nature. The rich
imagination of the youth fastened upon the one perceptible and clear
clew to the mystery of this supernatural being,--the presence of the
artistic nature, that wild impassioned nature to which such mighty
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