The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: grow and spread, like the gourd along the ground; but, like
the gourd, they give no shade to the traveller, and when they
are ripe death gathers them, and they go down unloved into
hell, and their name vanishes out of the land.
'But to the souls of fire I give more fire, and to those who
are manful I give a might more than man's. These are the
heroes, the sons of the Immortals, who are blest, but not
like the souls of clay. For I drive them forth by strange
paths, Perseus, that they may fight the Titans and the
monsters, the enemies of Gods and men. Through doubt and
need, danger and battle, I drive them; and some of them are
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: to shadow out in its leading points the interesting character of
a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Murray Keith, whose death occurring
shortly before, had saddened a wide circle, much attached to her,
as well for her genuine virtue and amiable qualities of
disposition, as for the extent of information which she
possessed, and the delightful manner in which she was used to
communicate it. In truth, the author had, on many occasions,
been indebted to her vivid memory for the SUBSTRATUM of his
Scottish fictions, and she accordingly had been, from an early
period, at no loss to fix the Waverley Novels on the right
culprit.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: instances are quoted as being of a piece with what
Winnebago termed her queerness.
Not that Fanny Brandeis went beauless through school. On
the contrary, she always had some one to carry her books,
and to take her to the school parties and home from the
Friday night debating society meetings. Her first love
affair turned out disastrously. She was twelve, and she
chose as the object of her affections a bullet-headed boy
named Simpson. One morning, as the last bell rang and they
were taking their seats, Fanny passed his desk and gave his
coarse and stubbly hair a tweak. It was really a love
 Fanny Herself |