| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: tips. All should go in his way, from the principal
lightkeeper's coat to the assistant's fender, from the gravel
in the garden-walks to the bad smell in the kitchen, or the
oil-spots on the store-room floor. It might be thought there
was nothing more calculated to awake men's resentment, and yet
his rule was not more thorough than it was beneficent. His
thought for the keepers was continual, and it did not end with
their lives. He tried to manage their successions; he thought
no pains too great to arrange between a widow and a son who
had succeeded his father; he was often harassed and perplexed
by tales of hardship; and I find him writing, almost in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The American by Henry James: but no one is admitted who can't show his fifty quarterings."
"And this is the lady you propose to me to marry?" asked Newman.
"A lady I can't even approach?"
"But you said just now that you recognized no obstacles."
Newman looked at Mrs. Tristram a while, stroking his mustache.
"Is she a beauty?" he demanded.
"No."
"Oh, then it's no use--"
"She is not a beauty, but she is beautiful, two very different things.
A beauty has no faults in her face, the face of a beautiful woman may
have faults that only deepen its charm."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: their brief interview, had contrived to purloin a bag containing
almost all the culinary utensils of the party.
The travellers kept on their way due east, over a chain of hills.
The recent rencontre showed them that they were now in a land of
danger, subject to the wide roamings of a predacious tribe; nor,
in fact, had they gone many miles before they beheld sights
calculated to inspire anxiety and alarm. From the summits of some
of the loftiest mountains, in different directions, columns of
smoke be-an to rise. These they concluded to be signals made by
the runners of the Crow chieftain, to summon the stragglers of
his band, so as to pursue them with greater force. Signals of
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