| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: They had dear little fur coats of
their own; and they tumbled about
the doorstep and played in the dust.
But one day their mother--Mrs.
Tabitha Twitchit--expected friends to
tea; so she fetched the kittens indoors,
to wash and dress them, before the
fine company arrived.
First she scrubbed their faces (this
one is Moppet).
Then she brushed their fur (this
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: human beings in a nation. He who uses it speaks of them not as
human beings, but as things; and as things not bound together in one
living body, but lying in a fortuitous heap. A swarm of ants is not
a mass. It has a polity and a unity. Not the ants but the fir-
needles and sticks, of which the ants have piled their nest, are a
mass.
The term, I believe, was invented during the Ancien Regime. Whether
it was or not, it expresses very accurately the life of the many in
those days. No one would speak, if he wished to speak exactly, of
the masses of the United States; for there every man is, or is
presumed to be, a personage; with his own independence, his own
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: violently, and I dare say that during that moment I wondered if
anything else in the world makes people so gross as unselfishness.
I uttered, I suppose, some vague synthetic cry, for she went on as
if she had had a glimpse of my inward amaze at such passages. "I
assure you, my dear friend, he was in one of his happy hours."
But I wasn't thinking of that. "Truly indeed these Americans!" I
said. "With her father in the very act, as it were, of swindling
her betrothed!"
Mrs. Mulville stared. "Oh I suppose Mr. Anvoy has scarcely gone
bankrupt--or whatever he has done--on purpose. Very likely they
won't be able to keep it up, but there it was, and it was a very
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