| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: to receive me he kissed my hand. Mrs. Jeffrey is an intelligent and
agreeable woman but has been much out of health the last year. She
was Miss Wilkes of New York, you know. The house was an old
castellated and fortified house, and with modern additions is a most
beautiful residence. Capt. Rutherford told me that when he received
the Lord Advocate's letter announcing that we were coming, he went
to see Lord Jeffrey to know if he would be well enough to see us,
and he expressed the strongest admiration for Mr. Bancroft's work.
This may have disposed them to receive us with the cordiality which
made our visit so agreeable. Mr. Empson, his son-in-law and the
president editor of the Edinburgh Review, was staying there, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: "But they used to be magnificent!"
"Yes indeed, we have Aspern's word for that." And as I looked again
at the old woman's wrappings I could imagine that she had not wished
to allow people a reason to say that the great poet had overdone it.
But I did not waste my time in considering Miss Bordereau, in whom
the appearance of respiration was so slight as to suggest that no human
attention could ever help her more. I turned my eyes all over the room,
rummaging with them the closets, the chests of drawers, the tables.
Miss Tita met them quickly and read, I think, what was in them; but she did
not answer it, turning away restlessly, anxiously, so that I felt rebuked,
with reason, for a preoccupation that was almost profane in the presence
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
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