| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: castle. They knew not, that those the most interested in her
fate were well acquainted with the cause of her being carried
off, and the place of her retreat; and that the others, in the
anxious and doubtful moments which preceded the breaking forth of
a conspiracy, were little accessible to any feelings but what
arose immediately out of their own machinations.
CHAPTER XII.
Some one way, some another--Do you know
Where we may apprehend her?
The researches after Miss Vere were (for the sake of appearances,
perhaps) resumed on the succeeding day, with similar bad success,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce: He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with
a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and
sick. In few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the
foot of the left bank of the stream -- the southern bank --
and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his
enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of
one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept
with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it
over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked
like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing
beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank
 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: look to that, we can't. I don't ill-use my horse for the sake of it;
none of you can say I do. There's wrong lays somewhere --
never a day's rest, never a quiet hour with the wife and children.
I often feel like an old man, though I'm only forty-five.
You know how quick some of the gentry are to suspect us of cheating
and overcharging; why, they stand with their purses in their hands
counting it over to a penny and looking at us as if we were pickpockets.
I wish some of 'em had got to sit on my box sixteen hours a day
and get a living out of it and eighteen shillings beside,
and that in all weathers; they would not be so uncommon particular
never to give us a sixpence over or to cram all the luggage inside.
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