| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: "Muddle," said I, "is the enemy." That remains my belief to this
day. Clearness and order, light and foresight, these things I know
for Good. It was muddle had just given us all the still freshly
painful disasters and humiliations of the war, muddle that gives us
the visibly sprawling disorder of our cities and industrial country-
side, muddle that gives us the waste of life, the limitations,
wretchedness and unemployment of the poor. Muddle! I remember
myself quoting Kipling--
"All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess,
All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less."
"We build the state," we said over and over again. "That is what we
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: utterly different. I am cold as ice and I am ashamed. When my
daughter comes in to me and touches my forehead with her lips I
start as though a bee had stung me on the head, give a forced
smile, and turn my face away. Ever since I have been suffering
from sleeplessness, a question sticks in my brain like a nail. My
daughter often sees me, an old man and a distinguished man, blush
painfully at being in debt to my footman; she sees how often
anxiety over petty debts forces me to lay aside my work and to
walk u p and down the room for hours together, thinking; but why
is it she never comes to me in secret to whisper in my ear:
"Father, here is my watch, here are my bracelets, my earrings, my
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: cavalieros of the reign of Elizabeth, and was looked into now
and then by the wits of Charles the Second's day. But what
Wagstaff principally prides himself upon is, that Henry the
Eighth, in one of his nocturnal rambles, broke the head of one
of his ancestors with his famous walking-staff. This, however,
is considered as a rather dubious and vainglorious boast of the
landlord.
The club which now holds its weekly sessions here goes by
the name of "The Roaring Lads of Little Britain." They
abound in old catches, glees, and choice stories, that are
traditional in the place, and not to be met with in any other
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