| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: These successes, indeed, were such as might leave foresight and
courage a pretence still of disputing it with fortune, which
contributed most to the result. But the next following event can
scarcely be ascribed to anything but pure felicity. The Corinthian
soldiers who stayed at Thurii, partly for fear of the Carthaginian
galleys which lay in wait for them under the command of Hanno, and
partly because of tempestuous weather which had lasted for many days,
and rendered the sea dangerous, took a resolution to march by land
over the Bruttian territories, and, what with persuasion and force
together, made good their passage through those barbarians to the
city of Rhegium, the sea being still rough and raging as before. But
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: How say you, Segasto, is it not true?
KING.
His silence verifies it to be true. What then?
AMADINE.
Then I amazed, distressed, all alone,
Did hie me fast to scape that ugly bear,
But all in vain, for, why, he reached after me,
And hardly I did oft escape his paws,
Till at the length this shepherd came,
And brought to me his head.
Come hither boy: lo, here it is,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: Then, as never before, he must have realized the peril of the
nation, with its credit gone, its laws defied, its flag insulted.
The South had carried out its threat, and seven million Americans
were in revolt against the idea that "all men are created equal,"
while twenty million other Americans were bent upon defending
that idea. For the moment both sides had paused to see how the
new President would treat this attempt at secession. It must be
constantly borne in mind that the rebellion in the Southern
States with which Mr. Lincoln had to deal was not a sudden
revolution, but a conspiracy of slow growth and long planning. As
one of its actors frankly admitted, it was "not an event of a
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