| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: They are bad enough in the open plains, where they can be seen and
avoided, but in the tall grass or the scrub they are a continuous
anxiety. No cover seems small enough to reveal them. Often they
will stand or lie absolutely immobile until you are within a very
short distance, and then will outrageously break out. They are,
in spite of their clumsy build, as quick and active as polo
ponies, and are the only beasts I know of capable of leaping into
full speed ahead from a recumbent position. In thorn scrub they
are the worst, for there, no matter how alert the traveller may
hold himself, he is likely to come around a bush smack on one.
And a dozen times a day the throat-stopping, abrupt crash and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: thirty-eight, and worse than penniless--in debt.
And that was not all. As Ferdinand Brandeis' wife she had
occupied a certain social position in the little Jewish
community of Winnebago. True, they had never been moneyed,
while the others of her own faith in the little town were
wealthy, and somewhat purse-proud. They had carriages, most
of them, with two handsome horses, and their houses were
spacious and veranda-encircled, and set in shady lawns.
When the Brandeis family came to Winnebago five years
before, these people had waited, cautiously, and
investigated, and then had called. They were of a type to
 Fanny Herself |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: Greek, to say nothing of a modern Parisian, would have shocked a
Japanese. Yet we are shocked by them. We are astounded at the
sights we see in their country villages, while they in their turn
marvel at the exhibitions they witness in our city theatres. At
their watering-places the two sexes bathe promiscuously together in
all the simplicity of nature; but for a Japanese woman to appear on
the stage in any character, however proper, would be deemed indecent.
The difference between the two hemispheres may be said to consist in
an artless liberty on the one hand, and artistic license on the
other. Their unwritten code of propriety on the subject seems to
be, "You must see, but you may not observe."
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