| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: superscription ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE, and joined in the talk. They
were all very polite, voluble, and enthusiastic; and their
discourse was interlarded with English boating terms, and the names
of English boat-builders and English clubs. I do not know, to my
shame, any spot in my native land where I should have been so
warmly received by the same number of people. We were English
boating-men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon our necks. I
wonder if French Huguenots were as cordially greeted by English
Protestants when they came across the Channel out of great
tribulation. But after all, what religion knits people so closely
as a common sport?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: please.'
'All right,' said Herrick.
'You will please use "sir" when you address me, Mr Hay,'
said the captain. 'I'll take the lady. Step to starboard, Sally.'
And then he whispered in Herrick's ear: 'take the old man.'
'I'll take you, there,' said Herrick.
'What's your name?' said the captain. 'What's that you say?
Oh, that's no English; I'll have none of your highway gibberish
on my ship. We'll call you old Uncle Ned, because you've got
no wool on the top of your head, just the place where the wool
ought to grow. Step to port, Uncle. Don't you hear Mr Hay has
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: All melting; though our drops this difference bore:
His poison'd me, and mine did him restore.
'In him a plenitude of subtle matter,
Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,
Of burning blushes or of weeping water,
Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,
In either's aptness, as it best deceives,
To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows;
'That not a heart which in his level came
Could scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,
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