| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: complications of my story are due; complications into which a mind
less active in weaving imaginary hypotheses to interpret casual and
trifling facts would never have been drawn. From my childhood I
have been the victim of my constructive imagination, which has led
me into many mistakes and some scrapes; because, instead of
contenting myself with plain, obvious evidence, I have allowed
myself to frame hypothetical interpretations, which, to acts simple
in themselves, and explicable on ordinary motives, render the
simple-seeming acts portentous. With bitter pangs of self-reproach
I have at times discovered that a long and plausible history
constructed by me, relating to personal friends, has crumpled into
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: philosopher would be considerably amused. Yet it is really a very
few years since both philosophy and science were subjected to
brutal popular control, to authority - in fact the authority of
either the general ignorance of the community, or the terror and
greed for power of an ecclesiastical or governmental class. Of
course, we have to a very great extent got rid of any attempt on
the part of the community, or the Church, or the Government, to
interfere with the individualism of speculative thought, but the
attempt to interfere with the individualism of imaginative art
still lingers. In fact, it does more than linger; it is
aggressive, offensive, and brutalising.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: call they you?"
Dick told him his name, and presented Lord Foxham's signet, which
the duke immediately recognised.
"Ye come too soon," he said; "but why should I complain? Ye are
like me, that was here at watch two hours before the day. But this
is the first sally of mine arms; upon this adventure, Master
Shelton, shall I make or mar the quality of my renown. There lie
mine enemies, under two old, skilled captains - Risingham and
Brackley - well posted for strength, I do believe, but yet upon two
sides without retreat, enclosed betwixt the sea, the harbour, and
the river. Methinks, Shelton, here were a great blow to be
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