| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: prim drawing-room was the centre of constant comings
and goings from Hepburn, Nettleton, Springfield and
even more distant cities; and whenever a visitor
arrived he was led across the hall, and treated to
a glimpse of the group of girls deep in their pretty
preparations.
"All the old names...all the old names...." Miss
Hatchard would be heard, tapping across the hall on her
crutches. "Targatt...Sollas...Fry: this is Miss Orma
Fry sewing the stars on the drapery for the organ-loft.
Don't move, girls....and this is Miss Ally Hawes, our
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: AUTO-DA-FE, in which nearly three hundred heretics, amongst whom
were many Englishmen, had been delivered over to the secular arm to
be burned.
Certainly he had loved her madly, and to the ruin, many thought, of
his country, then at war with England for the possession of the
empire of the New World. He had hardly ever permitted her to be
out of his sight; for her, he had forgotten, or seemed to have
forgotten, all grave affairs of State; and, with that terrible
blindness that passion brings upon its servants, he had failed to
notice that the elaborate ceremonies by which he sought to please
her did but aggravate the strange malady from which she suffered.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: arrived at his destination - his last hope for the night.
The house was quite dark, like its neighbours; and yet after a few
taps, he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and a cautious
voice asking who was there. The poet named himself in a loud
whisper, and waited, not without come trepidation, the result. Nor
had he to wait long. A window was suddenly opened, and a pailful
of slops splashed down upon the doorstep. Villon had not been
unprepared for something of the sort, and had put himself as much
in shelter as the nature of the porch admitted; but for all that,
he was deplorably drenched below the waist. His hose began to
freeze almost at once. Death from cold and exposure stared him in
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