| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: exist in the country, if anybody who is anybody does. The country
always bores me to death.
CECILY. Ah! This is what the newspapers call agricultural
depression, is it not? I believe the aristocracy are suffering
very much from it just at present. It is almost an epidemic
amongst them, I have been told. May I offer you some tea, Miss
Fairfax?
GWENDOLEN. [With elaborate politeness.] Thank you. [Aside.]
Detestable girl! But I require tea!
CECILY. [Sweetly.] Sugar?
GWENDOLEN. [Superciliously.] No, thank you. Sugar is not
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: twenty-four years ago--with knights and nobles and so on,
clothed in silken and golden Paris-made gorgeousnesses,
planned and bought for that single night's use; and in their
train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and other
diverting grotesquerie--a startling and wonderful sort of show,
as it filed solemnly and silently down the street in the light
of its smoking and flickering torches; but it is said that
in these latter days the spectacle is mightily augmented,
as to cost, splendor, and variety. There is a chief personage--'Rex;'
and if I remember rightly, neither this king nor any of his
great following of subordinates is known to any outsider.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: wondered the more profoundly.
'Sir,' he said - 'for I know not whether I should still
address you as Mr. Jones - '
'Jones, Breitman, Higginbotham, Pumpernickel, Daviot,
Henderland, by all or any of these you may address me,' said
the plotter; 'for all I have at some time borne. Yet that
which I most prize, that which is most feared, hated, and
obeyed, is not a name to be found in your directories; it is
not a name current in post-offices or banks; and, indeed,
like the celebrated clan M'Gregor, I may justly describe
myself as being nameless by day. But,' he continued, rising
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