| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: than twenty minutes for each; and if we had not spent many another
twenty minutes waiting for some express upon a side track among
miles of desert, we might have taken an hour to each repast and
arrived at San Francisco up to time. For haste is not the foible
of an emigrant train. It gets through on sufferance, running the
gauntlet among its more considerable brethren; should there be a
block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed; and they cannot, in
consequence, predict the length of the passage within a day or so.
Civility is the main comfort that you miss. Equality, though
conceived very largely in America, does not extend so low down as
to an emigrant. Thus in all other trains, a warning cry of "All
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: class during Wagner's lifetime: one, the greatly gifted Goetz,
who died young; the other, Brahms, whose absolute musical
endowment was as extraordinary as his thought was commonplace.
Wagner had for him the contempt of the original thinker for the
man of second-hand ideas, and of the strenuously dramatic
musician for mere brute musical faculty; but though his contempt
was perhaps deserved by the Triumphlieds, and Schicksalslieds,
and Elegies and Requiems in which Brahms took his brains so
seriously, nobody can listen to Brahms' natural utterance of the
richest absolute music, especially in his chamber compositions,
without rejoicing in his amazing gift. A reaction to absolute
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: He was walking with Colonel N., who accom-
panied him as far as the inn, said good-bye to him,
and then turned back to the fortress. I im-
mediately despatched one of the old soldiers for
Maksim Maksimych.
Pechorin's manservant went out to meet him
and informed him that they were going to put to
at once; he handed him a box of cigars, received
a few orders, and went off about his business. His
master lit a cigar, yawned once or twice, and sat
down on the bench on the other side of the gate.
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