| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: VIVIAN. My dear fellow, I am prepared to prove anything.
CYRIL. Nature follows the landscape painter, then, and takes her
effects from him?
VIVIAN. Certainly. Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we
get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets,
blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous
shadows? To whom, if not to them and their master, do we owe the
lovely silver mists that brood over our river, and turn to faint
forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying barge? The
extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of London
during the last ten years is entirely due to a particular school of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Fling them, nor look behind: with these will
Upon the heart of Daphnis make essay.
Nothing for gods, nothing for songs cares he.
"Draw from the town, my songs, draw Daphnis home.
Look, look I the very embers of themselves
Have caught the altar with a flickering flame,
While I delay to fetch them: may the sign
Prove lucky! something it must mean, for sure,
And Hylax on the threshold 'gins to bark!
May we believe it, or are lovers still
By their own fancies fooled?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: which Hugh managed abroad and Alan at home, at an age when
others are still curveting a clerk's stool. My kinsman, Mr.
Stevenson of Stirling, has heard his father mention that there
had been `something romantic' about Alan's marriage: and,
alas! he has forgotten what. It was early at least. His wife
was Jean, daughter of David Lillie, a builder in Glasgow, and
several times `Deacon of the Wrights': the date of the
marriage has not reached me; but on 8th June 1772, when
Robert, the only child of the union, was born, the husband and
father had scarce passed, or had not yet attained, his
twentieth year. Here was a youth making haste to give
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