| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: calculate things, and use a telescope, and have to work out figures,
and know to a fraction where I was wrong, I should be perfectly happy,
and I believe I should give William all he wants."
Having reached this point, instinct told her that she had passed
beyond the region in which Henry's advice could be of any good; and,
having rid her mind of its superficial annoyance, she sat herself upon
the stone seat, raised her eyes unconsciously and thought about the
deeper questions which she had to decide, she knew, for herself. Would
she, indeed, give William all he wanted? In order to decide the
question, she ran her mind rapidly over her little collection of
significant sayings, looks, compliments, gestures, which had marked
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: with Andrew Fairservice, - though without his vices. He was a man
whose very presence could impart a savour of quaint antiquity to
the baldest and most modern flower-plots. There was a dignity
about his tall stooping form, and an earnestness in his wrinkled
face that recalled Don Quixote; but a Don Quixote who had come
through the training of the Covenant, and been nourished in his
youth on WALKER'S LIVES and THE HIND LET LOOSE.
Now, as I could not bear to let such a man pass away with no sketch
preserved of his old-fashioned virtues, I hope the reader will take
this as an excuse for the present paper, and judge as kindly as he
can the infirmities of my description. To me, who find it so
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: The sea, the ship, and the seamen were soon as familiar as home to
these half-conscious little ones. It was odd to hear them,
throughout the voyage, employ shore words to designate portions of
the vessel. 'Go 'way doon to yon dyke,' I heard one say, probably
meaning the bulwark. I often had my heart in my mouth, watching them
climb into the shrouds or on the rails, while the ship went swinging
through the waves; and I admired and envied the courage of their
mothers, who sat by in the sun and looked on with composure at these
perilous feats. 'He'll maybe be a sailor,' I heard one remark;
'now's the time to learn.' I had been on the point of running
forward to interfere, but stood back at that, reproved. Very few in
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