| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: He did not believe you ever got used to it. The
weariness of such a life got worse as you got older.
What sort of trade was it in which more than half
your time you did not put your foot inside your
house? Directly you got out to sea you had no
means of knowing what went on at home. One
might have thought him weary of distant voyages;
and the longest he had ever made had lasted a fort-
night, of which the most part had been spent at
anchor, sheltering from the weather. As soon as
his wife had inherited a house and enough to live on
 To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: end the differences by measuring?
EUTHYPHRO: Very true.
SOCRATES: And we end a controversy about heavy and light by resorting to a
weighing machine?
EUTHYPHRO: To be sure.
SOCRATES: But what differences are there which cannot be thus decided, and
which therefore make us angry and set us at enmity with one another? I
dare say the answer does not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I
will suggest that these enmities arise when the matters of difference are
the just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable. Are not
these the points about which men differ, and about which when we are unable
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Heart of the West by O. Henry: "'Big Spring Valley,' chips in Paisley, out of a lot of potatoes and
knuckle-bone of ham in his mouth.
"That was the first sign I noticed that the old /fidus Diogenes/
business between me and Paisley Fish was ended forever. He knew how I
hated a talkative person, and yet he stampedes into the conversation
with his amendments and addendums of syntax. On the map it was Big
Spring Valley; but I had heard Paisley himself call it Spring Valley a
thousand times.
"Without saying any more, we went out after supper and set on the
railroad track. We had been pardners too long not to know what was
going on in each other's mind.
 Heart of the West |