| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: a cup of coffee.'
A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down in the 'texas,'
and comforting himself with coffee. Just then the night watchman
happened in, and was about to happen out again, when he noticed
Ealer and exclaimed--
'Who is at the wheel, sir?'
'X.'
'Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!'
The next moment both men were flying up the pilot-house companion way,
three steps at a jump! Nobody there! The great steamer was
whistling down the middle of the river at her own sweet will!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Man of Business by Honore de Balzac: his valet's house; and, by the way, he will be a hero to his valet to
the end of the chapter, even after the marriage that he proposes to
make. He belonged to three clubs, and dined at one of them whenever he
did not dine out. As a rule, he was to be found very seldom at his own
address--"
"He once said to me," interrupted La Palferine, " 'My one affectation
is the pretence that I make of living in the Rue Pigalle.' "
"Well," resumed Desroches, "he was one of the combatants; and now for
the other. You have heard more or less talk of one Claparon?"
"Had hair like this!" cried Bixiou, ruffling his locks till they stood
on end. Gifted with the same talent for mimicking absurdities which
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: but to be lawless and yet to please? The little that we know
of verse (and for my part I owe it all to my friend Professor
Fleeming Jenkin) is, however, particularly interesting in the
present connection. We have been accustomed to describe the
heroic line as five iambic feet, and to be filled with pain
and confusion whenever, as by the conscientious schoolboy, we
have heard our own description put in practice.
'All night | the dread | less an | gel un | pursued,' (2)
goes the schoolboy; but though we close our ears, we cling to
our definition, in spite of its proved and naked
insufficiency. Mr. Jenkin was not so easily pleased, and
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