| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Reef by Edith Wharton: This light-hearted philosophy was not without charm to a
young man accustomed to more traditional views. George
Darrow had had a fairly varied experience of feminine types,
but the women he had frequented had either been pronouncedly
"ladies" or they had not. Grateful to both for ministering
to the more complex masculine nature, and disposed to assume
that they had been evolved, if not designed, to that end, he
had instinctively kept the two groups apart in his mind,
avoiding that intermediate society which attempts to
conciliate both theories of life. "Bohemianism" seemed to
him a cheaper convention than the other two, and he liked,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: neither seen her nor seen Miss Anvoy. I forget to-day the exact
order in which, at this period, sundry incidents occurred and the
particular stage at which it suddenly struck me, making me catch my
breath a little, that the progression, the acceleration, was for
all the world that of fine drama. This was probably rather late in
the day, and the exact order doesn't signify. What had already
occurred was some accident determining a more patient wait. George
Gravener, whom I met again, in fact told me as much, but without
signs of perturbation. Lady Coxon had to be constantly attended
to, and there were other good reasons as well. Lady Coxon had to
be so constantly attended to that on the occasion of a second
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: subject.
"I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte'
or 'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of men, these
men who do the lowest part of the world's work should be
machines,--nothing more,--hands. It would be kindness. God
help them! What are taste, reason, to creatures who must live
such lives as that?" He pointed to Deborah, sleeping on the
ash-heap. "So many nerves to sting them to pain. What if God
had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into your
fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?"
"You think you could govern the world better?" laughed the
 Life in the Iron-Mills |