| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: was to walk to and from Nassau Street) I remember that seeing a
thousand-dollar clock exposed for sale caused me annoyance. Of course my
salary as a clerk brought me into no unfavourable comparison with the
clock; and I doubt if I could make you understand my sometimes feeling
when I passed Tiffany's window that I should like to smash the clock."
"I met Ethel frequently in society, dancing with her, and sitting next
her at dinners. And by the time I had dined at her own house, and walked
several afternoons with her, my lot as a six-hundred-dollar clerk began
to seem very sad to me. I wrote verses about it, and about other subjects
also. From an evening passed with Ethel, I would go next morning to the
office and look at the other clerks. One of them was fifty-five, and he
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: braes upon the other side, still sallow and in places rusty with the
winter, with the path marked boldly, here and there by the burn-side a
tuft of birches, and - two miles off as the crow flies - from its
enclosures and young plantations, the windows of Hermiston glittering in
the western sun.
Here she sat down and waited, and looked for a long time at these far-
away bright panes of glass. It amused her to have so extended a view,
she thought. It amused her to see the house of Hermiston - to see
"folk"; and there was an indistinguishable human unit, perhaps the
gardener, visibly sauntering on the gravel paths.
By the time the sun was down and all the easterly braes lay plunged in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: the modern world out of the decay of the mediaeval world, the French
PHILOSOPHES and encyclopaedists are, of course, the most notorious.
They confessed, for the most part, that their original inspiration
had come from England. They were, or considered themselves, the
disciples of Locke; whose philosophy, it seems to me, their own acts
disproved.
And first, a few words on these same philosophes. One may be
thoroughly aware of their deficiencies, of their sins, moral as well
as intellectual; and yet one may demand that everyone should judge
them fairly--which can only be done by putting himself in their
place; and any fair judgment of them will, I think, lead to the
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