| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: "What do I care if he's afraid! I want him to shove the pintle
into the lower gudgeon. My God," she exclaimed, with immense
contempt, "what carrion! I'd sooner work a boat with she-monkeys.
Mr. Wilbur, I shall have to ask you to go over. I thought I was
captain here, but it all depends on whether these rats are afraid
or not."
"Plenty many shark," expostulated Charlie. "Him flaid shark come
back, catchum chop-chop."
"Stand by here with a couple of cutting-in spades," cried Moran,
"and fend off if you see any shark; now, then, are you ready,
mate?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: morning, after he had just read the hasty billet and sat down to table.
"I suppose it will be business, sir," replied the housekeeper drily,
measuring his distance off to him by an indicated curtsy.
"But I can't imagine what business!" he reiterated.
"I suppose it will be HIS business," retorted the austere Kirstie.
He turned to her with that happy brightness that made the charm of his
disposition, and broke into a peal of healthy and natural laughter.
"Well played, Mrs. Elliott!" he cried; and the housekeeper's face
relaxed into the shadow of an iron smile. "Well played indeed!" said
he. "But you must not be making a stranger of me like that. Why,
Archie and I were at the High School together, and we've been to college
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: by the alarming news of the Duke of Somerset's urgent demand for
reinforcements. Unless he had them, he declared, the whole country was
lost, as he could not get the militia to stand, whilst Lord Stawell's
regiment were all fled and mostly gone over to the rebels at Bridgwater.
This was grave news, but it was followed in a few days by graver. The
affair at Philips Norton was exaggerated by report into a wholesale
defeat of the loyal army, and it was reported - on, apparently, such
good authority that it received credence in quarters that might have
waited for official news - that the Duke of Albemarle had been slain
by the militia which had mutinied and deserted to Monmouth.
It was while this news was going round that Sunderland - in a moment of
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