The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: This common species is more frequently met with than many others,
because it prefers shallow water, and often lives high up among
rocks which are only covered by the sea at very high tide; so that
the creature can, if it will, spend but a short portion of its time
immersed. When uncovered by the tide, it gathers up its leathery
tunic, and presents the appearance of fig. 1 A. When under water
it may often be seen expanding its flower-like disk and moving its
feelers in search of food. These feelers have a certain power of
adhesion, and any not too vigorous animals which they touch are
easily drawn towards the centre and swallowed. Around the margin
of the tunic are seen peeping out between the tentacles certain
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: otherwise expressed, I cut my stick, or, as they say at the court,
I file off. If you don't find papa and mamma, young 'uns, come back
here this evening. I'll scramble you up some supper, and I'll give
you a shakedown." The two children, picked up by some policeman
and placed in the refuge, or stolen by some mountebank, or having
simply strayed off in that immense Chinese puzzle of a Paris,
did not return. The lowest depths of the actual social world
are full of these lost traces. Gavroche did not see them again.
Ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. More than once he
had scratched the back of his head and said: "Where the devil are my
two children?"
Les Miserables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: To right and left of us people bent over and whispered admiration down
Fraulein Sonia's neck. She bowed in the grand style.
"I am always successful," she said to me. "You see, when I act I AM. In
Vienna, in the plays of Ibsen we had so many bouquets that the cook had
three in the kitchen. But it is difficult here. There is so little magic.
Do you not feel it? There is none of that mysterious perfume which floats
almost as a visible thing from the souls of the Viennese audiences. My
spirit starves for want of that." She leaned forward, chin on hand.
"Starves," she repeated.
The Professor appeared with his trombone, blew into it, held it up to one
eye, tucked back his shirt cuffs and wallowed in the soul of Sonia
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