| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: the entrance gate to the big mosque at Fattehpur-Sikri? It's rather
nice. "The world is a looking-glass, wherein the image has come and
is gone--take as thine own nothing more than what thou lookest
upon."'
My daughter's thoughtful gaze was, of course, fixed upon the
speaker, and in his own glance I saw a sudden ray of consciousness;
but Cecily transferred her eyes to the opposite wall, deeply
considering, and while Dacres and I smiled across the table, I saw
that she had perceived no reason for blushing. It was a singularly
narrow escape.
'No,' she said, 'I didn't; what a curious proverb for an emperor to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: nowadays for a forty-shilling theft. They transport 'em into penal
servitude at the uttermost ends of the earth beyond the seas, for
the term of their natural life. I told Cissie that, and I saw her
tremble in my mirror. Then she cried, and caught hold of my
knees, and I couldn't for my life understand what it was all about,
- she cried so. Can you guess, my dear, what that poor crazy thing
had done? It was midnight before I pieced it together. She had
given the spoons to Jerry Gamm, the Witchmaster on the Green,
so that he might put a charm on me! Me!'
'Put a charm on you? Why?'
'That's what I asked; and then I saw how mad poor Cissie was!
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: not so successful as it might have been, for the result
of it was occasionally a vague irritation, which expressed
itself in hostile criticism of several British institutions.
Bessie Alden went to some entertainments at which she met
Lord Lambeth; but she went to others at which his lordship was
neither actually nor potentially present; and it was chiefly
on these latter occasions that she encountered those literary
and artistic celebrities of whom mention has been made.
After a while she reduced the matter to a principle.
If Lord Lambeth should appear anywhere, it was a symbol that
there would be no poets and philosophers; and in consequence--
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