| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry: duties that those weighty volumes afforded.
A few weeks of incumbency diminished the new commissioner's awe of the
great and important office he had been called upon to conduct. An
increasing familiarity with its workings soon restored him to his
accustomed placid course of life. In his office was an old, spectacled
clerk--a consecrated, informed, able machine, who held his desk
regardless of changes of administrative heads. Old Kauffman instructed
his new chief gradually in the knowledge of the department without
seeming to do so, and kept the wheels revolving without the slip of a
cog.
Indeed, the Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History carried
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: was bound in nature to diminish. Twice have I gone astray, and twice
has Death stretched forth his bony hand to strike my happiness. The
first time, he robbed me of the noblest and most devoted of men; now
it is my turn, the grinning monster tears me from the arms of my poet
husband, with all his beauty and his grace.
"Yet I would not complain. Have I not known in turn two men, each the
very pattern of nobility--one in mind, the other in outward form? In
Felipe, the soul dominated and transformed the body; in Gaston, one
could not say which was supreme--heart, mind, or grace of form. I die
adored--what more could I wish for? Time, perhaps, in which to draw
near the God of whom I may have too little thought. My spirit will
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: "Not much sign of any wind yet," I remarked when he approached.
"No, sir. Not much," he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice,
with just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.
"Well, that's all you have to look out for. You have got your
orders."
"Yes, sir."
I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position
face forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen-rigging
before I went below. The mate's faint snoring was still going on
peacefully. The cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which
stood a vase with flowers, a polite attention from the ship's
'Twixt Land & Sea |
