| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: girl, the daughter of a colonel, one of the first families of
Georgia's modern chivalry, and all the weary, weary rest of it.
The Southern chivalry howled, and hanged or burned some one in
effigy. Perhaps it was the President, and perhaps it was the
negro--but the principle remains the same. They said it was an
insult. It is not good to be a negro in the land of the free and
the home of the brave.
But this is nothing to do with San Francisco and her merry
maidens, her strong, swaggering men, and her wealth of gold and
pride. They bore me to a banquet in honor of a brave
lieutenant--Carlin, of the "Vandalia"--who stuck by his ship in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum: Winkies and the Quadlings. Over this Land I ruled in peace for many
years, until I grew old and longed to see my native city once again.
So when Dorothy was first blown to this place by a cyclone I arranged
to go away with her in a balloon; but the balloon escaped too soon and
carried me back alone. After many adventures I reached Omaha, only to
find that all my old friends were dead or had moved away. So, having
nothing else to do, I joined a circus again, and made my balloon
ascensions until the earthquake caught me."
"That is quite a history," said Ozma; "but there is a little more
history about the Land of Oz that you do not seem to
understand--perhaps for the reason that no one ever told it you. Many
 Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: deserved it; what call was there for me to trust her?
" ' "What does this gentleman want?" asked the Count.
" 'I could see that the Countess was trembling from head to foot; the
white satin skin of her throat was rough, "turned to goose flesh," to
use the familiar expression. As for me, I laughed in myself without
moving a muscle.
" ' "This gentleman is one of my tradesmen," she said.
" 'The Count turned his back on me; I drew the bill half out of my
pocket. After that inexorable movement, she came over to me and put a
diamond into my hands. "Take it," she said, "and be gone."
" 'We exchanged values, and I made my bow and went. The diamond was
 Gobseck |