| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Lowlands. . . .
CHAPTER V - FOREST NOTES 1875-6
ON THE PLAIN
PERHAPS the reader knows already the aspect of the great levels of
the Gatinais, where they border with the wooded hills of
Fontainebleau. Here and there a few grey rocks creep out of the
forest as if to sun themselves. Here and there a few apple-trees
stand together on a knoll. The quaint, undignified tartan of a
myriad small fields dies out into the distance; the strips blend and
disappear; and the dead flat lies forth open and empty, with no
accident save perhaps a thin line of trees or faint church spire
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: soften by a formal deprecation, or to overbear by the
influence of a patron. The supplications of an author
never yet reprieved him a moment from oblivion;
and, though greatness has sometimes sheltered guilt,
it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness.
Having hitherto attempted only the propagation of
truth, I will not at last violate it by the confession
of terrours which I do not feel; having laboured to
maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now
degrade it by the meanness of dedication.
The seeming vanity with which I have sometimes
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: knife in his side, but the answer hung fire still and seemed to
lose itself in the vague darkness to which the thin admitted dawn,
glimmering archwise over the whole outer door, made a semicircular
margin, a cold silvery nimbus that seemed to play a little as he
looked - to shift and expand and contract.
It was as if there had been something within it, protected by
indistinctness and corresponding in extent with the opaque surface
behind, the painted panels of the last barrier to his escape, of
which the key was in his pocket. The indistinctness mocked him
even while he stared, affected him as somehow shrouding or
challenging certitude, so that after faltering an instant on his
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