| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: at Chaillot, where we first went to reside in that village. I
hoped to be not only secure, but to continue there for some time
without being pressed for payment. `Take us to Chaillot,' said I
to the coachman. He refused to drive us so far at that late hour
for less than twelve francs. A new embarrassment! At last we
agreed for half that sum--all that my purse contained.
"I tried to console Manon as we went along, but despair was
rankling in my own heart. I should have destroyed myself a
thousand times over, if I had not felt that I held in my arms all
that could attach me to life: this reflection reconciled me. `I
possess her at least,' said I; `she loves me! she is mine!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: edge; and lying in the roadstead a caravel, and three boats by her.
And at that sight there was not a man but was on deck at once, and
not a mouth but was giving its opinion of what should be done.
Some were for sailing right into the roadstead, the breeze blowing
fresh toward the shore (as it usually does throughout those islands
in the afternoon). However, seeing the billows break here and
there off the bay's mouth, they thought it better, for fear of
rocks, to run by quietly, and then send in the pinnace and the
boat. Yeo would have had them show Spanish colors, for fear of
alarming the caravel; but Amyas stoutly refused, "counting it," he
said, "a mean thing to tell a lie in that way, unless in extreme
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Timaeus by Plato: pitch, the juice of the castor berry, oil itself, and other things of a
like kind: thirdly, there is the class of substances which expand the
contracted parts of the mouth, until they return to their natural state,
and by reason of this property create sweetness;--these are included under
the general name of honey: and, lastly, there is a frothy nature, which
differs from all juices, having a burning quality which dissolves the
flesh; it is called opos (a vegetable acid).
As to the kinds of earth, that which is filtered through water passes into
stone in the following manner:--The water which mixes with the earth and is
broken up in the process changes into air, and taking this form mounts into
its own place. But as there is no surrounding vacuum it thrusts away the
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