| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: literature in democratic ages can never present, as it does in
the periods of aristocracy, an aspect of order, regularity,
science, and art; its form will, on the contrary, ordinarily be
slighted, sometimes despised. Style will frequently be
fantastic, incorrect, overburdened, and loose - almost always
vehement and bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution,
more than at perfection of detail. Small productions will be
more common than bulky books; there will be more wit than
erudition, more imagination than profundity; and literary
performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of
thought -frequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The
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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: was almost a moan. "What is't you want of me?"
"Yourself," said he. "I love you, Ruth," he added, and stepped close
up to her.
"0 God!" she cried aloud. "Had I a man at hand to kill you for that
insult!"
And then - miracle of miracles! - a voice from the shrubs by which they
stood bore to her ears the startling words that told her her prayer was
answered there and then.
"Madam, that man is here."
She stood frozen. Not more of a statue was Lot's wife in the moment of
looking behind her than she who dared not look behind. That voice! A
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: "It wasn't so with old-fashioned people, they knew right from
wrong; they had a clear-cut, religious faith that seemed to
explain everything and give a rule for everything. We haven't.
I haven't, anyhow. And it's no good pretending there is one when
there isn't. . . . I suppose I believe in God. . . . Never
really thought about Him--people don't. . . . I suppose my creed
is, 'I believe rather indistinctly in God the Father Almighty,
substratum of the evolutionary process, and, in a vein of vague
sentimentality that doesn't give a datum for anything at all, in
Jesus Christ, His Son.' . . .
"It's no sort of good, Ann Veronica, pretending one does believe
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