| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: whispered, "Are you willing to keep one condition, though hard it
be?"
"Yes! yes! I've told you ten of them if need be!" exclaimed
Iktomi, with some impatience.
"Then I pronounce you a handsome feathered bird. No longer
are you Iktomi the mischief-maker." Saying this the peacock
touched Iktomi with the tips of his wings.
Iktomi vanished at the touch. There stood beneath the tree
two handsome peacocks. While one of the pair strutted about with
a head turned aside as if dazzled by his own bright-tinted tail
feathers, the other bird soared slowly upward. He sat quiet and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: been, in their chief purpose, lost. For that, I did not so much
care; I had, at least, learned my own business thoroughly, and
should be able, as I fondly supposed, after such a lesson, now to
use my knowledge with better effect. But what I did care for was
the--to me frightful--discovery, that the most splendid genius in
the arts might be permitted by Providence to labour and perish
uselessly; that in the very fineness of it there might be something
rendering it invisible to ordinary eyes; but that, with this strange
excellence, faults might be mingled which would be as deadly as its
virtues were vain; that the glory of it was perishable, as well as
invisible, and the gift and grace of it might be to us as snow in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: father sometimes shot fairly well, though he often lost his head,
and missed frantically.
But our favorite sport was coursing with greyhounds. What a
pleasure it was when the footman Sergei Petrovitch came in and
woke us up before dawn, with a candle in his hand!
We jumped up full of energy and happiness, trembling all
over in the morning cold; threw on our clothes as quickly as we
could, and ran out into the zala, where the samovar was
boiling and papa was waiting for us.
Sometimes mama came in in her dressing-gown, and made us put
on all sorts of extra woolen stockings, and sweaters and gloves.
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