| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: seem to have lost my solemnity, my gravity, my poise, my dignity?
You would lose your own, in my circumstances. Mother, you never
saw such a winning little devil. She is all energy, and spirit,
and sunshine, and interest in everybody and everything, and pours
out her prodigal love upon every creature that will take it, high
or low, Christian or pagan, feathered or furred; and none has
declined it to date, and none ever will, I think. But she has a
temper, and sometimes it catches fire and flames up, and is likely
to burn whatever is near it; but it is soon over, the passion goes
as quickly as it comes. Of course she has an Indian name already;
Indians always rechristen a stranger early. Thunder-Bird attended
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: was never the path of a return. Flowers were all very well, but -
Pemberton could complete the proposition. It was now positively
conspicuous that in the long run the Moreens were a social failure;
so that the young man was almost grateful the run had not been
short. Mr. Moreen indeed was still occasionally able to get away
on business and, what was more surprising, was likewise able to get
back. Ulick had no club but you couldn't have discovered it from
his appearance, which was as much as ever that of a person looking
at life from the window of such an institution; therefore Pemberton
was doubly surprised at an answer he once heard him make his mother
in the desperate tone of a man familiar with the worst privations.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: sad dead fly. In the center of the carpet was a rug depicting
a red Newfoundland dog, reclining in a green and yellow daisy
field and labeled "Our Friend." The parlor organ, tall and
thin, was adorned with a mirror partly circular, partly square,
and partly diamond-shaped, and with brackets holding a pot
of geraniums, a mouth-organ, and a copy of "The Oldtime
Hymnal." On the center table was a Sears-Roebuck mail-order
catalogue, a silver frame with photographs of the Baptist
Church and of an elderly clergyman, and an aluminum tray
containing a rattlesnake's rattle and a broken spectacle-lens.
Mrs. Bogart spoke of the eloquence of the Reverend Mr.
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