The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.
Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip,
and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it
looks in print--I translate this from a conversation
in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.
"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English
maiden?
Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera."
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: ask them more, they grow modest, and hold their peace, for fear of
being laughed at; and quite right they are.
So all that good little Ellie could say was, that it was worth all
the rest of the world put together. And of course that only made
Tom the more anxious to go likewise.
"Miss Ellie," he said at last, "I will know why I cannot go with
you when you go home on Sundays, or I shall have no peace, and give
you none either."
"You must ask the fairies that."
So when the fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, came next, Tom asked her.
"Little boys who are only fit to play with sea-beasts cannot go
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: wonder if it's because I feel so horribly small to-night that
the place seems so horribly big."
She loved luxury: splendid things always made her feel handsome
and high ceilings arrogant; she did not remember having ever
before been oppressed by the evidences of wealth.
She laid down the brush and leaned her chin on her clasped
hands .... Even now she could not understand what had made her
take the cigars. She had always been alive to the value of her
inherited scruples: her reasoned opinions were unusually free,
but with regard to the things one couldn't reason about she was
oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken Streffy's cigars! She
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