| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: of the old palaces of Little Britain. They seem to me to keep
together, and to look down with sovereign contempt upon
their leathern-bottomed neighbors: as I have seen decayed
gentry carry a high head among the plebeian society with which
they were reduced to associate. The whole front of my sitting-
room is taken up with a bow-window, on the panes of which
are recorded the names of previous occupants for many
generations, mingled with scraps of very indifferent
gentlemanlike poetry, written in characters which I can scarcely
decipher, and which extol the charms of many a beauty of
Little Britain who has long, long since bloomed, faded, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: it was necessary to unload the canoes, and to transport both them
and their cargoes to the head of the Narrows by land. Their party
was too few in number for the purpose. They were obliged,
therefore, to seek the assistance of the Cathlasco Indians, who
undertook to carry the goods on their horses. Forward then they
set, the Indians with their horses well freighted, and the first
load convoyed by Reed and five men, well armed; the gallant
Irishman striding along at the head, with his tin case of
despatches glittering on his back. In passing, however, through a
rocky and intricate defile, some of the freebooting vagrants
turned their horses up a narrow path and galloped off, carrying
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: It was not that Mrs. Aubyn permitted herself to be a pensioner on
his bounty. He knew she had no wish to keep herself alive on the
small change of sentiment; she simply fed on her own funded
passion, and the luxuries it allowed her made him, even then,
dimly aware that she had the secret of an inexhaustible alchemy.
Their relations remained thus negatively tender till she suddenly
wrote him of her decision to go abroad to live. Her father had
died, she had no near ties in Hillbridge, and London offered more
scope than New York to her expanding personality. She was already
famous and her laurels were yet unharvested.
For a moment the news roused Glennard to a jealous sense of lost
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