| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: dust, street refuse, and children who played with empty kerosene
tins, that I discovered the difference of speech.
"You want to go to the Palace Hotel?" said an affable youth on a
dray. "What in hell are you doing here, then? This is about the
lowest ward in the city. Go six blocks north to corner of Geary
and Markey, then walk around till you strike corner of Gutter and
Sixteenth, and that brings you there."
I do not vouch for the literal accuracy of these directions,
quoting but from a disordered memory.
"Amen," I said. "But who am I that I should strike the corners
of such as you name? Peradventure they be gentlemen of repute,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: into moonlight.
At first the two companions talked very little. Sir Richmond
was well content with this tacit friendliness and Miss
Grammont was preoccupied because she was very strongly moved
to tell him things about herself that hitherto she had told
to no one. It was not merely that she wanted to tell him
these things but also that for reasons she did not put as yet
very clearly to herself she thought they were things he ought
to know. She talked of herself at first in general terms.
"Life comes on anyone with a rush, childhood seems lasting
for ever and then suddenly one tears into life," she said. It
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Here is a pretty state of things!" said the traveller. "Dying for
a smoke; only one match left; and that certain to miss fire! Was
there ever a creature so unfortunate? And yet," thought the
traveller, "suppose I light this match, and smoke my pipe, and
shake out the dottle here in the grass - the grass might catch on
fire, for it is dry like tinder; and while I snatch out the flames
in front, they might evade and run behind me, and seize upon yon
bush of poison oak; before I could reach it, that would have blazed
up; over the bush I see a pine tree hung with moss; that too would
fly in fire upon the instant to its topmost bough; and the flame of
that long torch - how would the trade wind take and brandish that
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