| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: At the door he was told that Mrs. Glennard was still out, and he
went upstairs to his room and dragged the books from his pocket.
They lay on the table before him like live things that he feared
to touch. . . . At length he opened the first volume. A familiar
letter sprang out at him, each word quickened by its glaring garb
of type. The little broken phrases fled across the page like
wounded animals in the open. . . . It was a horrible sight. . . .
A battue of helpless things driven savagely out of shelter. He
had not known it would be like this. . . .
He understood now that, at the moment of selling the letters, he
had viewed the transaction solely as it affected himself: as an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: snaky shapes, rolling in to hiss and flatten upon the sand. Yet
no single cirrus-speck revealed itself through all the violet
heights: there was no wind!--you might have fancied the sea had
been upheaved from beneath ...
And indeed the fancy of a seismic origin for a windless surge
would not appear in these latitudes to be utterly without
foundation. On the fairest days a southeast breeze may bear you
an odor singular enough to startle you from sleep,--a strong,
sharp smell as of fish-oil; and gazing at the sea you might be
still more startled at the sudden apparition of great oleaginous
patches spreading over the water, sheeting over the swells. That
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame!
Love's arms are peace, 'gainst rule, 'gainst sense, 'gainst
shame.
And sweetens, in the suffering pangs it bears,
The aloes of all forces, shocks and fears.
'Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,
Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine,
And supplicant their sighs to your extend,
To leave the battery that you make 'gainst mine,
Lending soft audience to my sweet design,
And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath,
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