| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: being the only sound that broke the silence. After that they had
done this several times, they disappeared for a moment and came
back leading a brown shaggy bear by a chain, and carrying on their
shoulders some little Barbary apes. The bear stood upon his head
with the utmost gravity, and the wizened apes played all kinds of
amusing tricks with two gipsy boys who seemed to be their masters,
and fought with tiny swords, and fired off guns, and went through a
regular soldier's drill just like the King's own bodyguard. In
fact the gipsies were a great success.
But the funniest part of the whole morning's entertainment, was
undoubtedly the dancing of the little Dwarf. When he stumbled into
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: Mudie sends us.
MISS PRISM. Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel,
Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
CECILY. Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you
are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end
happily. They depress me so much.
MISS PRISM. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That
is what Fiction means.
CECILY. I suppose so. But it seems very unfair. And was your
novel ever published?
MISS PRISM. Alas! no. The manuscript unfortunately was abandoned.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: seeking for light and life by means forbidden, found thereby
disease and death. Yes, I know that; and know, too, that that
rest is found only where you have already found it.
And yet, in such a world as this, governed by a Being who has made
sunshine, and flowers, and green grass, and the song of birds, and
happy human smiles, and who would educate by them--if we would let
Him--His human children from the cradle to the grave; in such a
world as this, will you grudge any particle of that education,
even any harmless substitute for it, to those spirits in prison
whose surroundings too often tempt them, from the cradle to the
grave, to fancy that the world is composed of bricks and iron, and
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