| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: "I have invited Mrs. Westgate and Miss Alden to Branches,"
he said, "and this evening I shall name a day."
"And shall you invite your mother and your sisters to meet them?"
"Explicitly!"
"That will set the duchess off," said Percy Beaumont.
"I suspect she will come."
"She may do as she pleases."
Beaumont looked at Lord Lambeth. "You do really propose to marry
the little sister, then?"
"I like the way you talk about it!" cried the young man.
"She won't gobble me down; don't be afraid."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: bear transportation for a hundred miles, nor from the parlour to the
kitchen. To be a gentleman is to be one all the world over, and in
every relation and grade of society. It is a high calling, to which
a man must first be born, and then devote himself for life. And,
unhappily, the manners of a certain so-called upper grade have a kind
of currency, and meet with a certain external acceptation throughout
all the others, and this tends to keep us well satisfied with slight
acquirements and the amateurish accomplishments of a clique. But
manners, like art, should be human and central.
Some of my fellow-passengers, as I now moved among them in a relation
of equality, seemed to me excellent gentlemen. They were not rough,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: perverseness of writers in despising this precaution, and to nothing else--
that all the polemical writings in divinity are not as clear and
demonstrative as those upon a Will o' the Wisp, or any other sound part of
philosophy, and natural pursuit; in order to which, what have you to do,
before you set out, unless you intend to go puzzling on to the day of
judgment--but to give the world a good definition, and stand to it, of the
main word you have most occasion for--changing it, Sir, as you would a
guinea, into small coin?--which done--let the father of confusion puzzle
you, if he can; or put a different idea either into your head, or your
reader's head, if he knows how.
In books of strict morality and close reasoning, such as I am engaged in--
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