| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: equally of the best talk and of the worst." He looked, in saying
this, as if he meant great things, and I was sure he could only
mean once more that neither of them mattered if a man wasn't a real
gentleman. Perhaps it was what he did mean; he deprived me however
of the exultation of being right by putting the truth in a slightly
different way. "The only thing that really counts for one's
estimate of a person is his conduct." He had his watch still in
his palm, and I reproached him with unfair play in having
ascertained beforehand that it was now the hour at which I always
gave in. My pleasantry so far failed to mollify him that he
promptly added that to the rule he had just enunciated there was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: you can and make another draw up; be quick, or in five
minutes the mob will be on us again with swords and muskets
and you will be killed. Hold! there's a carriage coming over
yonder."
Then bending again to Raoul, he whispered: "Above all things
do not divulge your name."
"That's right. I will go," said Comminges; "and if they come
back, fire!"
"Not at all -- not at all," replied D'Artagnan; "let no one
move. On the contrary, one shot at this moment would be paid
for dearly to-morrow."
Twenty Years After |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: upon dinner-parties, where the guests drank grossly,
discussing politics the while, and even the schoolboy "took
his whack," like liquorice water. And at the same time, we
look timidly forward, with a spark of hope, to where the new
lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green with
vineyards. A nice point in human history falls to be decided
by Californian and Australian wines.
Wine in California is still in the experimental stage; and
when you taste a vintage, grave economical questions are
involved. The beginning of vine-planting is like the
beginning of mining for the precious metals: the wine-grower
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