| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then I lowered my pack, laid
it along the wall on the margin of the road, and unbuckled the
straps. I knew well enough where the lantern was; but where were
the candles? I groped and groped among the tumbled articles, and,
while I was thus groping, suddenly I touched the spirit-lamp.
Salvation! This would serve my turn as well. The wind roared
unwearyingly among the trees; I could hear the boughs tossing and
the leaves churning through half a mile of forest; yet the scene of
my encampment was not only as black as the pit, but admirably
sheltered. At the second match the wick caught flame. The light
was both livid and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: the Exalted High Pillow-slip of the Kuklux Klan.
In spite of which The Rose of Dixie kept coming out every month.
Although in every issue it ran photos of either the Taj Mahal or the
Luxembourg Gardens, or Carmencita or La Follette, a certain number of
people bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, Editor-
Colonel Telfair ran three different views of Andrew Jackson's old
home, "The Hermitage," a full-page engraving of the second battle of
Manassas, entitled "Lee to the Rear!" and a five-thousand-word
biography of Belle Boyd in the same number. The subscription list
that month advanced 118. Also there were poems in the same issue by
Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name), related to the Haricots of
 Options |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: yet flickering with the morning gold, it is the vision of
John,--the apocalyptic Sea of Glass mixed with fire;--again, with
the growing breeze, it takes that incredible purple tint familiar
mostly to painters of West Indian scenery;--once more, under the
blaze of noon, it changes to a waste of broken emerald. With
evening, the horizon assumes tints of inexpressible
sweetness,--pearl-lights, opaline colors of milk and fire; and in
the west are topaz-glowings and wondrous flushings as of nacre.
Then, if the sea sleeps, it dreams of all these,--faintly,
weirdly,--shadowing them even to the verge of heaven.
Beautiful, too, are those white phantasmagoria which, at the
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