| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: (III.) I say you have despised Art! "What!" you again answer,
"have we not Art exhibitions, miles long? and do we not pay
thousands of pounds for single pictures? and have we not Art schools
and institutions,--more than ever nation had before?" Yes, truly,
but all that is for the sake of the shop. You would fain sell
canvas as well as coals, and crockery as well as iron; you would
take every other nation's bread out of its mouth if you could; {15}
not being able to do that, your ideal of life is to stand in the
thoroughfares of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, screaming to
every passer-by, "What d'ye lack?" You know nothing of your own
faculties or circumstances; you fancy that, among your damp, flat,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.
"Oft to his frozen lair
Tracked I the grisly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed the were-wolf's bark,
Until the soaring lark
Sang from the meadow.
"But when I older grew,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: drew Hepzibah along with him. A moment afterwards, the train--with
all the life of its interior, amid which Clifford had made himself
so conspicuous an object--was gliding away in the distance, and
rapidly lessening to a point which, in another moment, vanished.
The world had fled away from these two wanderers. They gazed
drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church,
black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken
windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a
rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther off was
a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church,
with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within
 House of Seven Gables |