| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: breath of solitude should carry a man back to childhood and
childish things.
. . . . . .
It was three in the afternoon of the next day, and the sun lay
hot on the oak groves, and the air was full of warmth as we began
to climb the slope, midway up which the road to Auch shoots out
of the track. The yellow bracken and the fallen leaves underfoot
seemed to throw up light of themselves; and here and there a
patch of ruddy beech lay like a bloodstain on the hillside. In
front a herd of pigs routed among the mast, and grunted lazily;
and high above us a boy lay watching them. 'We part here,' I
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: Richard were wedded, had been earlier excited by Westmacott's
indiscretions, was full of sly questions now touching the business
which might be taking Vallancey to Scoresby. But Richard was too full
of the subject of the fear he had instilled into Wilding to afford his
companion much satisfaction on any other score. Thus they came to
Lupton House, and as Richard swaggered down the lawn into the presence
of the ladies - Ruth and her aunt were occupying the stone bench, Diana
the circular seat about the great oak in the centre of the lawn - he
was a very different person from the pale, limp creature they had
beheld there some few hours earlier. Loud and offensive was he now
in self-laudation, and so indifferent to all else that he left
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in
the age of the Stuarts."
Who was that boarder that just whispered something about the
Macaulay-flowers of literature? - There was a dead silence. - I
said calmly, I shall henceforth consider any interruption by a pun
as a hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my example.
If I have used any such, it has been only as a Spartan father would
show up a drunken helot. We have done with them.
- If a logical mind ever found out anything with its logic? - I
should say that its most frequent work was to build a PONS ASINORUM
over chasms which shrewd people can bestride without such a
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |