| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: plucked up courage and tipped the head clerk a signal. He says -
"What! you here yet? What's wanting?"
Says I, in a low voice and very confidential, making a trumpet with
my hands at his ear -
"I beg pardon, and you mustn't mind my reminding you, and seeming
to meddle, but hain't you forgot something?"
He studied a second, and says -
"Forgot something? . . . No, not that I know of."
"Think," says I.
He thought. Then he says -
"No, I can't seem to have forgot anything. What is it?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: in his stone house but in a rich and large pavilion brought
out especially for the Viceroy and now pitched upon the
river bank, under palms. I came to him past numbers out
of that thirty. Idle here; they certainly were idle here!
With him I found a secretary, but when he could he preferred
always to write his own letters, in his small, clear,
strong hand, and now he was doing this, propped in bed,
in his brow a knot of pain. He wrote many letters. Long
afterwards I heard that it had become a saying in Spain,
``Write of your matters as often as Christopherus Columbus!''
I sat waiting for him to finish and he saw my eyes upon
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: sixty days on end - a summons from the king reached Louis of
Orleans at the Hotel Barbette, where he had been supping with
Queen Isabel. It was seven or eight in the evening, and the
inhabitants of the quarter were abed. He set forth in haste,
accompanied by two squires riding on one horse, a page, and a
few varlets running with torches. As he rode, he hummed to
himself and trifled with his glove. And so riding, he was
beset by the bravoes of his enemy and slain. My lord of
Burgundy set an ill precedent in this deed, as he found some
years after on the bridge of Montereau; and even in the
meantime he did not profit quietly by his rival's death. The
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