| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: and by way of a love-token and a remembrance to you takes
a random shot at me."
The abbot of Rubygill picked up the missile-missive or messenger arrow,
which had rebounded from his shaven crown, with a very unghostly
malediction on the sender, which he suddenly checked with a pious
and consolatory reflection on the goodness of Providence in having
blessed him with such a thickness of skull, to which he was now indebted
for temporal preservation, as he had before been for spiritual promotion.
He opened the letter, which was addressed to father Michael;
and found it to contain an intimation that William Gamwell was to be
hanged on Monday at Nottingham.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: somewhere, however, a ray of light fell into the blackness. The
official stepped into the room, pulling Berner in after him. The
poor old man was in a state of trembling excitement when he found
himself in the house where his beloved young lady might already be
a corpse. One step more and a smothered cry broke from his lips.
The commissioner had opened the door of an adjoining room, which
was lighted and handsomely furnished. Only the heavy iron bars
across the closed windows showed that the young lady who sat leaning
back wearily in an arm-chair was a prisoner.
She looked up as they entered. The expression of utter despair and
deep weariness which had rested on her pale face changed to a look
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: as a bracket to a wall. With this hint you will now be able to
pick out the leper station on a map; you will be able to judge how
much of Molokai is thus cut off between the surf and precipice,
whether less than a half, or less than a quarter, or a fifth, or a
tenth - or, say a twentieth; and the next time you burst into print
you will be in a position to share with us the issue of your
calculations.
I imagine you to be one of those persons who talk with cheerfulness
of that place which oxen and wain-ropes could not drag you to
behold. You, who do not even know its situation on the map,
probably denounce sensational descriptions, stretching your limbs
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