| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: When Company C arrived in Napoleon, I was already there.
Yes, I was there, with a new trade--fortune-teller. Not to seem partial,
I made friends and told fortunes among all the companies
garrisoned there; but I gave Company C the great bulk of my attentions.
I made myself limitlessly obliging to these particular men;
they could ask me no favor, put upon me no risk, which I would decline.
I became the willing butt of their jokes; this perfected my popularity;
I became a favorite.
I early found a private who lacked a thumb--what joy it was to me!
And when I found that he alone, of all the company, had lost
a thumb, my last misgiving vanished; I was SURE I was on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Edition of The Ambassadors by Henry James: hadn't told her. When at rare moments and in the watches of the
night he pounced on one it generally showed itself to be--to a
deeper scrutiny--not quite truly of the essence. When anything new
struck him as coming up, or anything already noted as reappearing,
he always immediately wrote, as if for fear that if he didn't he
would miss something; and also that he might be able to say to
himself from time to time "She knows it NOW--even while I worry."
It was a great comfort to him in general not to have left past
things to be dragged to light and explained; not to have to produce
at so late a stage anything not produced, or anything even veiled
and attenuated, at the moment. She knew it now: that was what he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: Age after age when I am dead
To be filled up with light, and then
Emptied, to be refilled again.
What has man done that only he
Is slave to death -- so brutally
Beaten back into the earth
Impatient for him since his birth?
Oh let me shut my eyes, close out
The sight of stars and earth and be
Sheltered a minute by this tree.
Hemlock, through your fragrant boughs
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