The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: perseverance, happened to remark that he thought he must have been born
in the heart of equatorial Africa; to which Ben Zoof replied, with the
utmost dignity, that he was born at Montmartre, which was all the same.
The worthy fellow was unwilling to own that, even in the matter of heat,
the tropics could in any way surpass his own much-loved home.
This unprecedented temperature very soon began to take effect upon
the products of the soil. The sap rose rapidly in the trees,
so that in the course of a few days buds, leaves, flowers, and fruit
had come to full maturity. It was the same with the cereals;
wheat and maize sprouted and ripened as if by magic,
and for a while a rank and luxuriant pasturage clothed
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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: recognising me, always holding me, and gleefully cried to a
gentleman who was arrested in the doorway by the sight of me: "He
has come back, he has come back, and you should have heard what he
says of me!" The gentleman was Geoffrey Dawling, and I thought it
best to let him hear on the spot. "How beautiful she is, my dear
man--but how extraordinarily beautiful! More beautiful at this
hour than ever, ever before!"
It gave them almost equal pleasure and made Dawling blush to his
eyes; while this in turn produced, in spite of deepened
astonishment, a blest snap of the strain I had been struggling
with. I wanted to embrace them both, and while the opening bars of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: nothing to lose; at any rate, there is plenty to see.
Long strings of young horses out of the country, fresh from the marshes;
and droves of shaggy little Welsh ponies, no higher than Merrylegs;
and hundreds of cart horses of all sorts, some of them with their long tails
braided up and tied with scarlet cord; and a good many like myself,
handsome and high-bred, but fallen into the middle class, through some
accident or blemish, unsoundness of wind, or some other complaint.
There were some splendid animals quite in their prime, and fit for anything;
they were throwing out their legs and showing off their paces in high style,
as they were trotted out with a leading rein, the groom running by the side.
But round in the background there were a number of poor things,
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