| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: it to the porter."
SMALL FRY
"HONORED Sir, Father and Benefactor!" a petty clerk called
Nevyrazimov was writing a rough copy of an Easter congratulatory
letter. "I trust that you may spend this Holy Day even as many
more to come, in good health and prosperity. And to your family
also I . . ."
The lamp, in which the kerosene was getting low, was smoking and
smelling. A stray cockroach was running about the table in alarm
near Nevyrazimov's writing hand. Two rooms away from the office
Paramon the porter was for the third time cleaning his
 The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: ended.
There in the soft, black ground was a moccasin-print. The forest was not
dense; there was plenty of light; no logs, stones or trees were near, and yet
over all that glade no further evidence of the Indian's trail was visible.
It faded there as the great chief had boasted it would.
Wetzel searched the burnt ground; he crawled on his hands and knees; again and
again he went over the surroundings. The fact that one moccasin-print pointed
west and the other east, showed that the Delaware had turned in his tracks,
was the most baffling thing that had ever crossed the hunter in all his wild
wanderings.
For the first time in many years he had failed. He took his defeat hard,
 The Spirit of the Border |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: SOCRATES: And the vinegrower, if I am not mistaken, is a better judge of
the sweetness or dryness of the vintage which is not yet gathered than the
harp-player?
THEODORUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And in musical composition the musician will know better than
the training master what the training master himself will hereafter think
harmonious or the reverse?
THEODORUS: Of course.
SOCRATES: And the cook will be a better judge than the guest, who is not a
cook, of the pleasure to be derived from the dinner which is in
preparation; for of present or past pleasure we are not as yet arguing; but
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