| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: The old London road runs on one side of it; while the New
Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes the
circuit. You mount by stairs in a cutting of the rock to
find yourself in a field of monuments. Dugald Stewart
has the honours of situation and architecture; Burns is
memorialised lower down upon a spur; Lord Nelson, as
befits a sailor, gives his name to the top-gallant of the
Calton Hill. This latter erection has been differently
and yet, in both cases, aptly compared to a telescope and
a butter-churn; comparisons apart, it ranks among the
vilest of men's handiworks. But the chief feature is an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: wrath gathered headway like a great stone rolling down a hill,
so that at the end he was full of anger.
Then Eric o' Lincoln laughed aloud. "Well spoken for one who fears
to meet me fairly, man to man," said he. "Saucy art thou thine own self,
and if thou puttest foot upon these boards, I will make thy saucy tongue
rattle within thy teeth!"
"Now," quoth Little John, "is there never a man here that will
lend me a good stout staff till I try the mettle of yon fellow?"
At this, half a score reached him their staves, and he took the stoutest
and heaviest of them all. Then, looking up and down the cudgel,
he said, "Now, I have in my hand but a splint of wood--a barley straw,
 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: hall. "You will breakfast with us, Monsieur Poirot?"
Poirot acquiesced. I observed John. Already he was almost
restored to his normal self. The shock of the events of the last
night had upset him temporarily, but his equable poise soon swung
back to the normal. He was a man of very little imagination, in
sharp contrast with his brother, who had, perhaps, too much.
Ever since the early hours of the morning, John had been hard at
work, sending telegrams--one of the first had gone to Evelyn
Howard--writing notices for the papers, and generally occupying
himself with the melancholy duties that a death entails.
"May I ask how things are proceeding?" he said. "Do your
 The Mysterious Affair at Styles |