| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: he could think of nothing else. At last, one evening, he asked
Abdallah for another piece of gold, and Abdallah gave it to him,
and by the next morning it had vanished in the same way that the
other had flown. By-and-by Ali borrowed a third piece of money,
and then a fourth and then a fifth, so that by the time that six
months had passed and gone he had spent thirty of the hundred
pieces that had been found, and in all that time Abdallah had
used not so much as a pistareen.
But when Ali came for the thirty-and-first loan, Abdallah refused
to let him have any more money. It was in vain that the elder
begged and implored--the younger abided by what he had said.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: phrase "under thee their poesy disperse," meaning "by your
assistance as an actor bring their plays before the people."
'It was a wonderful evening, and we sat up almost till dawn reading
and re-reading the Sonnets. After some time, however, I began to
see that before the theory could be placed before the world in a
really perfected form, it was necessary to get some independent
evidence about the existence of this young actor, Willie Hughes.
If this could be once established, there could be no possible doubt
about his identity with Mr. W. H.; but otherwise the theory would
fall to the ground. I put this forward very strongly to Cyril, who
was a good deal annoyed at what he called my Philistine tone of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: on the other, the church and the ruins of the castle perched on the
rock and vividly detached upon the blue of the ether. The Abbe
Gabriel, his feet creaking on the gravelly paths cut in stars and
rounds and lozenges, looked down upon the village, where some of the
inhabitants were already gazing up at him, and then at the fresh, cool
valley, with its tangled paths, its river bordered with willows in
delightful contrast to the endless plain, and he was suddenly seized
with sensations which changed the nature of his thoughts; he admired
the sweet tranquillity of the place; he felt the influence of that
pure air; he was conscious of the peace inspired by the revelation of
a life brought back to Biblical simplicity; he saw, confusedly, the
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