| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: to discharge Graff he had never quite found time for it.
Now into Babbitt's private room charged a red-faced man, panting, "Look here!
I've come to raise particular merry hell, and unless you have that fellow
pinched, I will!" "What's--Calm down, o' man. What's trouble?"
"Trouble! Huh! Here's the trouble--"
"Sit down and take it easy! They can hear you all over the building!"
"This fellow Graff you got working for you, he leases me a house. I was in
yesterday and signs the lease, all O.K., and he was to get the owner's
signature and mail me the lease last night. Well, and he did. This morning I
comes down to breakfast and the girl says a fellow had come to the house right
after the early delivery and told her he wanted an envelope that had been
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: covered with oilcloth, did duty for dressing tables. They were
black with spilled water, and underneath them was a fine medley of
dinted zinc jugs, slop pails and coarse yellow earthenware crocks.
There was an array of fancy articles in the room--a battered, soiled
and well-worn array of chipped basins, of toothless combs, of all
those manifold untidy trifles which, in their hurry and
carelessness, two women will leave scattered about when they undress
and wash together amid purely temporary surroundings, the dirty
aspect of which has ceased to concern them.
"Do come here," Fauchery repeated with the good-humored familiarity
which men adopt among their fallen sisters. "Clarisse is wanting to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: some attention; moreover, my vows, I have no doubt, are recorded
in the book of life, and must I give these all up? must my fair
hopes be forever blasted? Forbid it, father; oh! forbid it, mother;
forbid it, Heaven." "I have seen so many beautiful skies overclouded,"
replied the mother, "so many blossoms nipped by the frost,
that I am afraid to trust you to the care of those fair days,
which may be interrupted by thundering and tempestuous nights.
You no doubt think as I did--life's devious ways were strewn with
sweet-scented flowers, but ah! how long they have lingered around me
and took their flight in the vivid hope that laughs at the drooping
victims it has murdered." Elfonzo was moved at this sight.
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