| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: They had been several days making slow headway under their scanty
sail, when, on the 25th, they came in sight of land. It was about
fifteen leagues distant, and they remained two or three days
drifting along in sight of it. On the 28th, they descried, to
their great transport, a canoe approaching, managed by natives.
They came alongside, and brought a most welcome supply of
potatoes. They informed them that the land they had made was one
of the Sandwich Islands. The second mate and one of the seamen
went on shore in the canoe for water and provisions, and to
procure aid from the islanders, in towing the wreck into a
harbor.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson: far as the street door.
CHAPTER V - IN THE ADVOCATE'S HOUSE
THE next day, Sabbath, August 27th, I had the occasion I had long
looked forward to, to hear some of the famous Edinburgh preachers, all
well known to me already by the report of Mr Campbell. Alas! and I
might just as well have been at Essendean, and sitting under Mr.
Campbell's worthy self! the turmoil of my thoughts, which dwelt
continually on the interview with Prestongrange, inhibiting me from all
attention. I was indeed much less impressed by the reasoning of the
divines than by the spectacle of the thronged congregation in the
churches, like what I imagined of a theatre or (in my then disposition)
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: a new world fresh-fashioned for his delight; and as soon as he
could escape from the council-board or audience-chamber, he would
run down the great staircase, with its lions of gilt bronze and its
steps of bright porphyry, and wander from room to room, and from
corridor to corridor, like one who was seeking to find in beauty an
anodyne from pain, a sort of restoration from sickness.
Upon these journeys of discovery, as he would call them - and,
indeed, they were to him real voyages through a marvellous land, he
would sometimes be accompanied by the slim, fair-haired Court
pages, with their floating mantles, and gay fluttering ribands; but
more often he would be alone, feeling through a certain quick
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