| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: midst of a park. On certain days this great park was open to the
villagers, and the children came to picnic, and Lord Tredegar
gave them little cakes and tea in doll-size cups. Doubtless he
looked upon us as "my people."
But the lords of steel in Pittsburgh were too new at the game
to practice the customs of the nobility in beautifying their
surroundings. The mills had made things ugly and the place was
not what mother thought it ought to be for bringing up children.
So father took us back to Sharon, and there we had sunlight and
grass and trees. We rented a neat little company-house with a big
garden in the rear, where we raised enough potatoes to supply our
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: be a lengthy one; and if Mrs. Casaubon will not object to the delay."
As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it
had been a miraculous voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest
and worthiest among the sons of men. In that case her tottering
faith would have become firm again.
Naumann's apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the
sketch went on at once as well as the conversation. Dorothea sat
down and subsided into calm silence, feeling happier than she had
done for a long while before. Every one about her seemed good,
and she said to herself that Rome, if she had only been less ignorant,
would have been full of beauty its sadness would have been winged
 Middlemarch |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: Catholick countries about nine months after Lent, the markets
will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish
infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore
it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the
number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child
(in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths
of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags
included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten
shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have
said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he
 A Modest Proposal |