| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: minutes you will not be surprised to learn that I had tied my
sheet.
I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of course,
in company with the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied the
sheet in a sailing-boat; but in so little and crank a concern as a
canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not prepared to find
myself follow the same principle; and it inspired me with some
contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is certainly easier
to smoke with the sheet fastened; but I had never before weighed a
comfortable pipe of tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely
elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a commonplace, that we
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: darkness. Then came a gleam of light, and the light appears to
have broadened. She went into goggles as repentant Magdalens go
into the Catholic church."
"In spite of which you don't think she'll be saved?"
"SHE thinks she will--that's all I can tell you. There's no doubt
that when once she brought herself to accept her real remedy, as
she calls it, she began to enjoy a relief that she had never known.
That feeling, very new and in spite of what she pays for it most
refreshing, has given her something to hold on by, begotten in her
foolish little mind a belief that, as she says, she's on the mend
and that in the course of time, if she leads a tremendously healthy
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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: in his neatly painted wagon, with a couple of dozen full bottles,
to be exchanged for empty ones; the baker, with a lot of crackers
which Hepzibah had ordered for her retail custom; the butcher,
with a nice titbit which he fancied she would be eager to secure
for Clifford. Had any observer of these proceedings been aware
of the fearful secret hidden within the house, it would have
affected him with a singular shape and modification of horror,
to see the current of human life making this small eddy hereabouts,
--whirling sticks, straws and all such trifles, round and round,
right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!
The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread of lamb,
House of Seven Gables |
