| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: enough that he mixed constantly in public amusements, but it is
true. When one fierce passion is devouring the soul, we feel more
than ever the necessity of external excitement; and our dependence
on the world for temporary relief increases in direct proportion to
our contempt of the world and all its works. He went frequently to
the theaters, THEN fashionable, when
"The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,
And not a mask went unimproved away."
. . . . .
It was that memorable night, when, according to the history of the
veteran Betterton,* Mrs. Barry, who personated Roxana, had a green-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: him. Go! for God's sake, leave me!"
"You are lost, then,--and I have ruined you!"
"Come off, now or never," cried Amyas, clutching him by the arm,
and dragging him away like a child.
"You forgive me?" cried he.
"Forgive you?" and she burst into tears again.
Frank burst into tears also.
"Let me go back, and die with her--Amyas!--my oath!--my honor!" and
he struggled to turn back.
Amyas looked back too, and saw her standing calmly, with her hands
folded across her breast, awaiting Eustace and the servants; and he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: STRAIGHT off, we were in the country. It was
most lovely and pleasant in those sylvan solitudes
in the early cool morning in the first freshness of
autumn. From hilltops we saw fair green valleys lying
spread out below, with streams winding through them,
and island groves of trees here and there, and huge
lonely oaks scattered about and casting black blots of
shade; and beyond the valleys we saw the ranges of
hills, blue with haze, stretching away in billowy per-
spective to the horizon, with at wide intervals a dim
fleck of white or gray on a wave-summit, which we
 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |