| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: gave place more and more as we ascended to woods of oak and
madrona, dotted with enormous pines. It was these pines, as
they shot above the lower wood, that produced that pencilling
of single trees I had so often remarked from the valley.
Thence, looking up and from however far, each fir stands
separate against the sky no bigger than an eyelash; and all
together lend a quaint, fringed aspect to the hills. The oak
is no baby; even the madrona, upon these spurs of Mount Saint
Helena, comes to a fine bulk and ranks with forest trees -
but the pines look down upon the rest for underwood. As
Mount Saint Helena among her foothills, so these dark giants
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: would fill the streets.
But the expected execution was, to the great astonishment of the whole
town, put off from day to day for the following reason:--
The repentance and resignation of great criminals on their way to
death is one of the triumphs which the Church reserves for itself,--a
triumph which seldom misses its effect on the popular mind. Repentance
is so strong a proof of the power of religious ideas--taken apart from
all Christian interest, though that, of course, is the chief object of
the Church--that the clergy are always distressed by a failure on such
occasions. In July, 1829, such a failure was aggravated by the spirit
of party which envenomed every detail in the life of the body politic.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: hair, and said it was grown long and silky, and he said they would go back
to Denmark now. He asked her why her feet were bare, and what the marks on
her back were. Then he put her head on his shoulder, and picked her up,
and carried her away, away! She laughed--she could feel her face against
his brown beard. His arms were so strong.
As she lay there dreaming, with the ants running over her naked feet, and
with her brown curls lying in the sand, a Hottentot came up to her. He was
dressed in ragged yellow trousers, and a dirty shirt, and torn jacket. He
had a red handkerchief round his head, and a felt hat above that. His nose
was flat, his eyes like slits, and the wool on his head was gathered into
little round balls. He came to the milk-bush, and looked at the little
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