| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: had decided not to leave North Dormer.
Miss Hatchard reasoned with her kindly, but to no
purpose; she simply repeated: "I guess Mr. Royall's too
lonesome."
Miss Hatchard blinked perplexedly behind her eye-
glasses. Her long frail face was full of puzzled
wrinkles, and she leant forward, resting her hands on
the arms of her mahogany armchair, with the evident
desire to say something that ought to be said.
"The feeling does you credit, my dear."
She looked about the pale walls of her sitting-room,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Laches by Plato: remark is put that there are some persons who, having never been taught,
are better than those who have. Like a novice in the art of disputation,
he is delighted with the hits of Socrates; and is disposed to be angry with
the refinements of Nicias.
In the discussion of the main thesis of the Dialogue--'What is Courage?'
the antagonism of the two characters is still more clearly brought out; and
in this, as in the preliminary question, the truth is parted between them.
Gradually, and not without difficulty, Laches is made to pass on from the
more popular to the more philosophical; it has never occurred to him that
there was any other courage than that of the soldier; and only by an effort
of the mind can he frame a general notion at all. No sooner has this
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: around us were glowing with the crimson foliage of those little
bushes which God created to make burned lands look beautiful. The
trail ended in a precipitous gully, down which we scrambled with
high hopes, and fishing-rods unbroken, only to find that the river
was in a condition which made angling absurd if not impossible.
There must have been a cloud-burst among the mountains, for the
water was coming down in flood. The stream was bank-full, gurgling
and eddying out among the bushes, and rushing over the shoal where
the fish used to lie, in a brown torrent ten feet deep. Our last
day with the land-locked salmon seemed destined to be a failure, and
we must wait eight months before we could have another. There were
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