The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: was less strange than midnight, the time actually agreed on,
the packet from Budmouth sailing between one and two.
At last all was quiet, and he had nothing to do but to wait.
By no effort could he shake off the oppression of spirits
which he had experienced ever since his last meeting
with Eustacia, but he hoped there was that in his
situation which money could cure. He had persuaded
himself that to act not ungenerously towards his gentle
wife by settling on her the half of his property,
and with chivalrous devotion towards another and greater
woman by sharing her fate, was possible. And though he
 Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on
Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its
shrill and desolate wail, then dying into silence.
What a hopeless cloud lay upon them all forever,--upon Kate,
upon Harry, upon their whole house! Then there was John
Lambert; how could they keep it from him? how could they tell
him? Who could predict what he would say? Would he take the
worst and coarsest view of his young wife's mad action or the
mildest? Would he be strong or weak; and what would be
weakness, and what strength, in a position so strange? Would
he put Emilia from him, send her out in the world desolate, her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lemorne Versus Huell by Elizabeth Drew Stoddard: belonged to my grandfather, and which had, since his day, become
very valuable. Litigation was a habit of the Huell family. So the
sight of the Uxbridge family did not agitate me as it did Aunt
Eliza.
"The sly, methodical dogs! but I shall beat Lemorne yet!"
"How will you amuse yourself then, aunt?"
"I'll adopt some boys to inherit what I shall save from his
clutches."
The bath fatigued her so she remained in her room for the rest
of the day; but she kept me busy with a hundred trifles. I wrote
for her, computed interest, studied out bills of fare, till four
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