The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Briefly expressed the evening's toast;
And lo, before the lips were dry,
The Deacon rising to reply!
'Here in this house which once I built,
Papered and painted, carved and gilt,
And out of which, to my content,
I netted seventy-five per cent.;
Here at this board of jolly neighbours,
I reap the credit of my labours.
These were the days - I will say more -
These were the grand old days of yore!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: even McWilliams being affected by it.
They were tired with travel, and the long night watches did not
improve tempers already overstrained with the expectation of a
crisis too long dragged out. Rain fell during the night, and
continued gently in a misty drizzle after day broke. It was a
situation and an atmosphere ripe for tragedy, and it fell on them
like a clap of thunder out of a sodden sky.
Hughie was cook for the day, and he came chill and stiff-fingered
to his task. Summer as it was, there lay a thin coating of ice
round the edges of the stream, for they had camped in an altitude
of about nine thousand feet. The "King" had wakened in a vile
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: it easy for Francis to do yeoman's service to his country as that rare
and admirable thing, a Freethinker: the only sort of thinker, I may
remark, whose thoughts, and consequently whose religious convictions,
command any respect.
Now Mr Place, senior, would be described by many as a bad father; and
I do not contend that he was a conspicuously good one. But as
compared with the conventional good father who deliberately imposes
himself on his son as a god; who takes advantage of childish credulity
and parent worship to persuade his son that what he approves of is
right and what he disapproves of is wrong; who imposes a corresponding
conduct on the child by a system of prohibitions and penalties,
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