| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: but about Evesham I had a sense of things hidden as it were by depth
and mists, because he was so big and atmospheric a personality. No
other contemporary has had that effect upon me. I've sat beside him
at dinners, stayed in houses with him--he was in the big house party
at Champneys--talked to him, sounded him, watching him as I sat
beside him. I could talk to him with extraordinary freedom and a
rare sense of being understood. Other men have to be treated in a
special manner; approached through their own mental dialect,
flattered by a minute regard for what they have said and done.
Evesham was as widely and charitably receptive as any man I have
ever met. The common politicians beside him seemed like rows of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: complains of the waywardness of the alien.
The Irishman and the native Californian in their hours of
discontent use the revolver, not once, but six times. The press
records the fact, and asks in the next column whether the world
can parallel the progress of San Francisco. The American who
loves his country will tell you that this sort of thing is
confined to the lower classes. Just at present an ex-judge who
was sent to jail by another judge (upon my word I cannot tell
whether these titles mean anything) is breathing red-hot
vengeance against his enemy. The papers have interviewed both
parties, and confidently expect a fatal issue.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: changed the subject.
"And so you travel on foot?" he continued. "How romantic! How
courageous! And how are you pleased with my land? How does the
scenery affect you among these wild hills of ours?"
"Well, the fact is," began Stubbs - he was about to say that he
didn't care for scenery, which was not at all true, being, on the
contrary, only an athletic undergraduate pretension; but he had
begun to suspect that Berthelini liked a different sort of meat,
and substituted something else - "The fact is, I think it jolly.
They told me it was no good up here; even the guide-book said so;
but I don't know what they meant. I think it is deuced pretty -
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