| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: pinnacles of some ornate and monstrous church, they stood there, in
the sparkling brightness of the morning, the fit signboard of a
world of wonders.
Not one soul aboard the CASCO had set foot upon the islands, or
knew, except by accident, one word of any of the island tongues;
and it was with something perhaps of the same anxious pleasure as
thrilled the bosom of discoverers that we drew near these
problematic shores. The land heaved up in peaks and rising vales;
it fell in cliffs and buttresses; its colour ran through fifty
modulations in a scale of pearl and rose and olive; and it was
crowned above by opalescent clouds. The suffusion of vague hues
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: himself. We were perfectly safe. We chanced upon him
in the forest, early in the morning, and from the
safety of the branches overhead we chattered down at
him our dislike and hatred. And from branch to branch,
and from tree to tree, we followed overhead, making an
infernal row and warning all the forest-dwellers that
old Saber-Tooth was coming.
We spoiled his hunting for him, anyway. And we made
him good and angry. He snarled at us and lashed his
tail, and sometimes he paused and stared up at us
quietly for a long time, as if debating in his mind
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: but the little man put it plainly to his wife that he gave her two
hundred francs a month for her personal expenses, and paid Madame
Piedefer twelve hundred francs a year as a charge on the lands of La
Hautoy, and that this was two hundred francs a year more than was
agreed to under the marriage settlement.
"I say nothing of the cost of housekeeping," he said in conclusion.
"You may give your friends cake and tea in the evening, for you must
have some amusement. But I, who spent but fifteen hundred francs a
year as a bachelor, now spend six thousand, including rates and
repairs, and this is rather too much in relation to the nature of our
property. A winegrower is never sure of what his expenses may be--the
 The Muse of the Department |