| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: Then joyfully he turned back to his beloved mountains
and the life of his slow deep delight and his
pecking away before the open doors of fortune. By
and by he would build himself a little cabin down
in the lower pine mountains, where he would grow
a white beard, putter with occult wilderness crafts,
and smoke long contemplative hours in the sun before
his door. For tourists he would braid rawhide
reins and quirts, or make buckskin. The jays and
woodpeckers and Douglas squirrels would become
fond of him. So he would be gathered to his fathers,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: I was doubtless often a nuisance to my friends in those years; but
there were sacrifices I declined to make, and I never passed the
hat to George Gravener. I never forgot our little discussion in
Ebury Street, and I think it stuck in my throat to have to treat
him to the avowal I had found so easy to Mss Anvoy. It had cost me
nothing to confide to this charming girl, but it would have cost me
much to confide to the friend of my youth, that the character of
the "real gentleman" wasn't an attribute of the man I took such
pains for. Was this because I had already generalised to the point
of perceiving that women are really the unfastidious sex? I knew
at any rate that Gravener, already quite in view but still hungry
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: yellow gown turned to me. "We have been awfully good, haven't we,
Mr. Blakeley?" she asked. "Although I am crazy to hear, I have
not said 'wreck' once. I'm sure you must feel like the survivor
of Waterloo, or something of the sort."
"If you want me to tell you about the wreck," I said, glancing
across the table, "I'm sorry to be disappointing, but I don't
remember anything."
"You are fortunate to be able to forget it." It was the first word
Miss West had spoken directly to me, and it went to my head.
"There are some things I have not forgotten," I said, over the
candles. "I recall coming to myself some time after, and that a
 The Man in Lower Ten |