| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: care. My body, however, is all to whistles; I don't eat; but, man,
I can sleep. The car in front of mine is chock full of Chinese.
MONDAY. - What it is to be ill in an emigrant train let those
declare who know. I slept none till late in the morning, overcome
with laudanum, of which I had luckily a little bottle. All to-day
I have eaten nothing, and only drunk two cups of tea, for each of
which, on the pretext that the one was breakfast, and the other
dinner, I was charged fifty cents. Our journey is through ghostly
deserts, sage brush and alkali, and rocks, without form or colour,
a sad corner of the world. I confess I am not jolly, but mighty
calm, in my distresses. My illness is a subject of great mirth to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis: "Mamma," I said to her, "I will NOT give up the
Cosmos. It means everything to me; simply EVERYTHING!"
I am always firm with Mamma; it is kinder, in
the long run, to be quite positive. But what I
suffer at home from objections to the advanced
movements nobody knows!
Nobody but the Leaders of Thought can dream
what Martyrdom is!
Sacrifice! Sacrifice! That is the keynote of the
Liberal Life!
Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Country Doctor by Honore de Balzac: naturally inclined to say very much, but there is a good deal in him.
"We are very good friends. He dines with me on the day of Austerlitz,
on the Emperor's birthday, and on the anniversary of the disaster at
Waterloo, and during the dessert he always receives a napoleon to pay
for his wine very quarter. Every one in the Commune shares in my
feeling of respect for him; if he would allow them to support him,
nothing would please them better. At every house to which he goes the
people follow my example, and show their esteem by asking him to dine
with them. It is a feeling of pride that leads him to work, and it is
only as a portrait of the Emperor that he can be induced to take my
twenty-franc piece. He has been deeply wounded by the injustice that
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