| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: prepared a short bibliography of certain English and Continental
translations.
At the time of Wilde's trial the nearly completed MS. of La Sainte
Courtisane was entrusted to Mrs. Leverson, the well-known novelist,
who in 1897 went to Paris on purpose to restore it to the author.
Wilde immediately left the only copy in a cab. A few days later he
laughingly informed me of the loss, and added that a cab was a very
proper place for it. I have explained elsewhere that he looked on
his works with disdain in his last years, though he was always full
of schemes for writing others. All my attempts to recover the lost
work failed. The passages here reprinted are from some odd leaves
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: and dreaded the heat as the most loathly happening
of earth, walked afield for love of the little child.
As Daniel went on the heat seemed to become pal-
pable -- something which could actually be seen.
There was now a thin, gaseous horror over the blaz-
ing sky, which did not temper the heat, but in-
creased it, giving it the added torment of steam.
The clogging moisture seemed to brood over the
accursed earth, like some foul bird with deadly
menace in wings and beak.
Daniel walked more and more unsteadily. Once
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: Love, I have chosen, and the world must go. Whatever happens
I will live this life--I will live for YOU! It--nothing shall turn
me aside; nothing, my dear one. Even if you died--even if you died--'
"'Yes,' she murmured, softly.
"'Then--I also would die.'
"And before she could speak again I began to talk, talking eloquently--
as I COULD do in that life--talking to exalt love, to make the life
we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing I was
deserting something hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine
thing to set aside. I bent all my mind to throw that glamour upon it,
seeking not only to convert her but myself to that. We talked, and
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