| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: and I need not say how readily I should share my wealth with
Godall. But I must know to what end: you must certainly tell us
what you mean."
The young man seemed to awaken; he looked uneasily from one to the
other, and his face flushed deeply.
"You are not fooling me?" he asked. "You are indeed ruined men
like me?"
"Indeed, I am for my part," replied the Colonel.
"And for mine," said the Prince, "I have given you proof. Who but
a ruined man would throw his notes into the fire? The action
speaks for itself."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: told us we were on Juja Farm, and warned us that we should be
careful of our fires in the long grass.
For an hour we plodded slowly along. Herds of zebra and
hartebeeste drew aside before us, dark heavy wildebeeste-the
gnu-stood in groups at a safe distance their heads low, looking
exactly like our vanished bison; ghostlike bands of Thompson's
gazelles glided away with their smooth regular motion. On the
vast and treeless plains single small objects standing above the
general uniformity took an exaggerated value; so that, before it
emerged from the swirling heat mirage, a solitary tree might
easily be mistaken for a group of buildings or a grove. Finally,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: fire and finally resolvable into it; and that fire
was the last and only-to-be-known God.
In passing I might call attention to the fact
that the Devil is supposed to dwell in the same
element.
Some of the secrets of heat resistance as
practiced by the dime-museum and sideshow
performers of our time, secrets grouped under
the general title of ``Fire-eating,'' must have
been known in very early times. To quote
from Chambers' ``Book of Days'': ``In ancient
 Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |