| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: sand as gives a tincture to the water: others tell us that the
sunbeams being reverberated from the red rocks, give the sea on
which they strike the appearance of that colour. Neither of these
accounts are satisfactory; the coasts are so scorched by the heat
that they are rather black than red; nor is the colour of this sea
much altered by the winds or rains. The notion generally received
is, that the coral found in such quantities at the bottom of the sea
might communicate this colour to the water: an account merely
chimerical. Coral is not to be found in all parts of this gulf, and
red coral in very few. Nor does this water in fact differ from that
of other seas. The patriarch and I have frequently amused ourselves
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: "Mrs. St. George is charming; I don't know whether you've had any
opportunity to talk with her. She'll be delighted to see you; she
likes great celebrities, whether incipient or predominant. You
must come and dine - my wife will write to you. Where are you to
be found?"
"This is my little address" - and Overt drew out his pocketbook and
extracted a visiting-card. On second thoughts, however, he kept it
back, remarking that he wouldn't trouble his friend to take charge
of it but would come and see him straightway in London and leave it
at his door if he should fail to obtain entrance.
"Ah you'll probably fail; my wife's always out - or when she isn't
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: Perhaps the fisherman ahead of you is such an one,--a man whom you
have known in town as a lawyer or a doctor, a merchant or a
preacher, going about his business in the hideous respectability of
a high silk hat and a long black coat. How good it is to see him
now in the freedom of a flannel shirt and a broad-brimmed gray felt
with flies stuck around the band.
In Professor John Wilson's Essays Critical and Imaginative, there
is a brilliant description of a bishop fishing, which I am sure is
drawn from the life: "Thus a bishop, sans wig and petticoat, in a
hairy cap, black jacket, corduroy breeches and leathern leggins,
creel on back and rod in hand, sallying from his palace, impatient
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