| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mountains by Stewart Edward White: distance, so that it gains from the presence of its
neighbor without losing from its proximity, a dome or a
pinnacle takes to itself the right of prominence. I
concede the waterfalls; but in other respects I prefer
the sister valleys.
That is not to say that one should not visit
Yosemite; nor that one will be disappointed. It is grand
beyond any possible human belief; and no one, even
a nerve-frazzled tourist, can gaze on it without the
strongest emotion. Only it is not so intimately satisfying
as it should be. It is a show. You do not take
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson: telling him. 'Be a man! Live it down, man!' But not he. Of course,
it's just solitude, and shame, and all that. But I confess I'm
beginning to fear the result. It would be all the pities in the world
if a really promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I'm seriously
tempted to write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him."
"I would if I were you," some of his auditors would say, shaking the
head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter, so
deftly indicated by a single word. "A capital idea!" they would add,
and wonder at the APLOMB and position of this young man, who talked as a
matter of course of writing to Hermiston and correcting him upon his
private affairs.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: answered candidly.
"Then, just now I am not so beautiful?" inquired she.
"It is not that," he said; "but I was so happy to have this walk alone
with you, that----" he stopped short in confusion, and looked at the
hillside and the road to Saintes.
"If the walk is any pleasure to you, I am delighted; for I owe you an
evening, I think, when you have given up yours for me. When you
refused to go to Mme. de Bargeton's, you were quite as generous as
Lucien when he made the demand at the risk of vexing her."
"No, not generous, only wise," said David. "And now that we are quite
alone under the sky, with no listeners except the bushes and the reeds
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