| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: was brief. Jealousy, to which all passion of a deep and exacting
power is inevitably allied, soon began to disturb my content.
Agalma had no tenderness. She permitted caresses, never returned
them. She was ready enough to listen to all my plans for the
future, so long as the recital moved amid details of fortune and
her position in society--that is, so long as her vanity was
interested; but I began to observe with pain that her thoughts
never rested on tender domesticities and poetic anticipations.
This vexed me more and more. The very spell which she exercised
over me made her want of tenderness more intolerable. I yearned
for her love--for some sympathy with the vehement passion which was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: lightning frequently set churches on fire, because we thus make
of the House of Prayer a house of mockery, and call that prayer
in which we bring nothing before God and desire nothing from Him.
But we should do as they do who wish to ask a favor of great
princes. These do not plan merely to babble a certain number of
words, for the prince would think they mocked him, or were
insane; but they put their request very plainly, and present
their need earnestly, and then leave it to his mercy, in good
confidence that he will grant it. So we must deal with God of
definite things, namely, mention some present need, commend it
to His mercy and good-will, and not doubt that it is heard; for
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: from the true line of his talk, he was more than likely to hurl
in a long-drawn parenthetical biography of the writer of that letter;
and you were lucky indeed if he did not take up that writer's relatives,
one by one, and give you their biographies, too.
Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To it, all occurrences
are of the same size. Its possessor cannot distinguish an interesting
circumstance from an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound
to clog his narrative with tiresome details and make himself
an insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot stick to his subject.
He picks up every little grain of memory he discerns in his way,
and so is led aside. Mr. Brown would start out with the honest
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