| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: withdraw gracefully and leave the field to the gilded youth of
England. So that settled. I shant worry her about it: I'll just
send her a little note after we're gone. She'll understand.
PRAED [grasping his hand] Good fellow, Frank! I heartily beg
your pardon. But must you never see her again?
FRANK. Never see her again! Hang it all, be reasonable. I
shall come along as often as possible, and be her brother. I can
n o t understand the absurd consequences you romantic people
expect from the most ordinary transactions. [A knock at the
door]. I wonder who this is. Would you mind opening the door?
If it's a client it will look more respectable than if I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: room, the Honolulu manse.
But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow-men;
and to bring it home to you, I will suppose your story to be true.
I will suppose - and God forgive me for supposing it - that Damien
faltered and stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose
that, in the horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of
incipient disease, he, who was doing so much more than he had
sworn, failed in the letter of his priestly oath - he, who was so
much a better man than either you or me, who did what we have never
dreamed of daring - he too tasted of our common frailty. "O, Iago,
the pity of it!" The least tender should be moved to tears; the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: Dr. Strauss, Lieutenant Marriotte's work cannot be performed
regularly. One presentation, however, was permitted at Lyons, the
composer's native town, where I am told it made an extraordinary
impression. In order to give English readers some faint idea of the
world-wide effect of Wilde's drama, my friend Mr. Walter Ledger has
prepared a short bibliography of certain English and Continental
translations.
At the time of Wilde's trial the nearly completed MS. of La Sainte
Courtisane was entrusted to Mrs. Leverson, the well-known novelist,
who in 1897 went to Paris on purpose to restore it to the author.
Wilde immediately left the only copy in a cab. A few days later he
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