| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Talk a little; or, if not,
Show me with a sign
Why it was that you forgot
What was yours and mine.
Friends, I gather, are small things
In an age when coins are kings;
Even at that, one hardly flings
Friends before swine.
Rather strong? I knew as much,
For it made you speak.
No offense to swine, as such,
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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: of silk, she was of opinion that I looked like a thief,
and without warning hurried me away. I then tried
to support myself by my needle; and, by my landlady's
recommendation obtained a little work from
a shop, and for three weeks lived without repining;
but when my punctuality had gained me so much
reputation, that I was trusted to make up a head of
some value, one of my fellow-lodgers stole the lace,
and I was obliged to fly from a prosecution.
Thus driven again into the streets, I lived upon
the least that could support me, and at night
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poor and Proud by Oliver Optic: have any fires on board ship in the docks; so we all board
ashore. I asked the man where we stopped if he knew such a
merchant as Matthew Guthrie. He did not know him, and never heard
of him. Then I went round among the big merchants, and asked
about your grandfather. I asked a good many before I found one
who knew him, and he said your grandfather had been dead ten
years. I asked him where the family was. He said Mr. Guthrie had
only two daughters; that one of them had run away with her
father's clerk, and the other was married and gone to America. He
said her husband belonged to Baltimore. This was all he knew
about it, and all I could find out. We shall sail home in about
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