| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tin Woodman of Oz by L. Frank Baum: enjoying the thought that she has put this terrible
enchantment on Woot the Wanderer. Even now she is
laughing at our despair because we can find no way to
get rid of the green monkey. Very well, we do not wish
to get rid of it. Let the woman who created the form
wear it herself, as a just punishment for her
wickedness. I am sure your fairy power can give to Mrs.
Yoop the form of Woot the Wanderer -- even at this
distance from her --and then it will be possible to
exchange the two forms. Mrs. Yoop will become the Green
Monkey, and Woot will recover his own form again."
 The Tin Woodman of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: to Paris. She receives much company, but goes nowhere."
The Observer speaks, you will notice, as an Oracle. His words,
anecdotes, and quotations must be accepted as truths, under pain of
being thought without social education or intelligence, and of causing
him to slander you with much zest in twenty salons where he is
considered indispensable. The Observer is forty years of age, never
dines at home, declares himself no longer dangerous to women, wears a
maroon coat, and has a place reserved for him in several boxes at the
"Bouffons." He is sometimes confounded with the Parasite; but he has
filled too many real functions to be thought a sponger; moreover he
possesses a small estate in a certain department, the name of which he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: up into the best vacancies in the kingdom.--He would often boast that the
Shandy family rank'd very high in king Harry the VIIIth's time, but owed
its rise to no state engine--he would say--but to that only;--but that,
like other families, he would add--it had felt the turn of the wheel, and
had never recovered the blow of my great-grandfather's nose.--It was an ace
of clubs indeed, he would cry, shaking his head--and as vile a one for an
unfortunate family as ever turn'd up trumps.
--Fair and softly, gentle reader!--where is thy fancy carrying thee!--If
there is truth in man, by my great-grandfather's nose, I mean the external
organ of smelling, or that part of man which stands prominent in his face--
and which painters say, in good jolly noses and well-proportioned faces,
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