| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: take to his boats, always drawn up in our background. He started
on a journey round the globe, and I was left with nothing but my
inference as to what might have happened. Later observation
however only confirmed my belief that if at any time during the
couple of months after Flora Saunt's brilliant engagement he had
made up, as they say, to the good lady of Folkestone, that good
lady would not have pushed him over the cliff. Strange as she was
to behold I knew of cases in which she had been obliged to
administer that shove. I went to New York to paint a couple of
portraits; but I found, once on the spot, that I had counted
without Chicago, where I was invited to blot out this harsh
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agesilaus by Xenophon: a cavalry engagement in face of heavy infantry, wheeled and step by
step retreated; their opponents with much demureness following. Then
Agesilaus, detecting the common error under which both parties
laboured, sent round his own bodyguard of stalwart troopers with
orders to their predecessors (an order they would act upon themselves)
to charge the enemy at full gallop and not give him a chance to rally.
The Thessalians, in face of this unexpected charge, either could not
so much as rally, or in the attempt to do so were caught with their
horses' flanks exposed to the enemy's attack. Polycharmus, the
Pharsalian, a commandant of cavalry, did indeed succeed in wheeling,
but was cut down with those about him sword in hand. This was the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: Surate and Damam, where the rector of the college came to see us,
but so sea-sick that the interview was without any satisfaction on
either side. Then landing at Bazaim we were received by our fathers
with their accustomed charity, and nothing was thought of but how to
put the unpleasing remembrance of our past labours out of our minds.
Finding here an order of the Father Provineta to forbid those who
returned from the missions to go any farther, it was thought
necessary to send an agent to Goa with an account of the revolutions
that had happened in Abyssinia and of the imprisonment of the
patriarch. For this commission I was made choice of; and, I know
not by what hidden degree of Providence, almost all affairs,
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