| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Talisman by Walter Scott: black, showed nothing of negro descent. He wore over his coal-
black locks a milk-white turban, and over his shoulders a short
mantle of the same colour, open in front and at the sleeves,
under which appeared a doublet of dressed leopard's skin reaching
within a handbreadth of the knee. The rest of his muscular
limbs, both legs and arms, were bare, excepting that he had
sandals on his feet, and wore a collar and bracelets of silver.
A straight broadsword, with a handle of box-wood and a sheath
covered with snakeskin, was suspended from his waist. In his
right hand he held a short javelin, with a broad, bright steel
head, of a span in length, and in his left he led by a leash of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: though he had come but for the renewal of the act of farewell,
found himself, when he had at last stood by it, beguiled into long
intensities. He stood for an hour, powerless to turn away and yet
powerless to penetrate the darkness of death; fixing with his eyes
her inscribed name and date, beating his forehead against the fact
of the secret they kept, drawing his breath, while he waited, as if
some sense would in pity of him rise from the stones. He kneeled
on the stones, however, in vain; they kept what they concealed; and
if the face of the tomb did become a face for him it was because
her two names became a pair of eyes that didn't know him. He gave
them a last long look, but no palest light broke.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: sharping, tricking temper which is too much crept in among the
gaming and horse-racing gentry in some parts of England to be so
much known among them any otherwise than to be abhorred; and yet
they sometimes play, too, and make matches and horse-races, as they
see occasion.
The ladies here do not want the help of assemblies to assist in
matchmaking, or half-pay officers to run away with their daughters,
which the meetings called assemblies in some other parts of England
are recommended for. Here is no Bury Fair, where the women are
scandalously said to carry themselves to market, and where every
night they meet at the play or at the assembly for intrigue; and
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