| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: of exercise. Absolutely I must go; good-by--until the
evening."
The hours of that day passed heavily for all of us. There
was a sense of disaster in the air. Something irretrievable
had fallen from our circle. But no one dared to name it.
Night closed in upon the house with a changing sky. All the
stars were hidden. The wind whimpered and then shouted. The
rain swept down in spiteful volleys, deepening at last into a
fierce, steady discharge. Nine o'clock, ten o'clock passed,
and Keene did not return. By midnight we were certain that
some accident had befallen him.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: was equally clear and cogent. It has been objected that he is
a woman-hater; and as this objection has been vehemently urged
by those whom Nature's decree has constituted the somewhat larger half
of the Spaceland race, I should like to remove it, so far as I can
honestly do so. But the Square is so unaccustomed to the use
of the moral terminology of Spaceland that I should be doing him
an injustice if I were literally to transcribe his defence against
this charge. Acting, therefore, as his interpreter and summarizer,
I gather that in the course of an imprisonment of seven years
he has himself modified his own personal views, both as regards Women
and as regards the Isosceles or Lower Classes. Personally,
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: through the door into the corridor. We followed him. There in
the flickering light of the lamp was the machine sure enough,
squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and
translucent glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch--for I put
out my hand and felt the rail of it--and with brown spots and
smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower
parts, and one rail bent awry.
The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his
hand along the damaged rail. `It's all right now,' he said.
'The story I told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you
out here in the cold.' He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute
The Time Machine |
