| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: over that dynamite mine and mooned along about his
damned onions and things. At first the tumult of my
own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and
swarming to the rescue from every quarter of my
skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusion and fifing
and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; but
presently when my mob of gathering plans began to
crystallize and fall into position and form line of battle,
a sort of order and quiet ensued and I caught the boom
of the king's batteries, as if out of remote distance:
"-- were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: associations, tract and other societies had published a number of
books in Chinese which they had translated from the European
languages. I was at that time the custodian of two or three of
these societies and had a great variety of Chinese books in my
possession. I therefore sent him copies of our astronomy,
geology, zoology, physiology and various other scientific books
which I was at that time teaching in the university.
The next day he called again, accompanied by a coolie who brought
me a present of a ham cooked at the imperial kitchen, together
with boxes of fruit and cakes, which, not being a man of large
appetite, I thanked him for, tipped the coolie, and after he had
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: educate others! What a dreadful experience that is! How appalling
is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit
of imparting opinions! How limited in range the creature's mind
proves to be! How it wearies us, and must weary himself, with its
endless repetitions and sickly reiteration! How lacking it is in
any element of intellectual growth! In what a vicious circle it
always moves!
ERNEST. You speak with strange feeling, Gilbert. Have you had
this dreadful experience, as you call it, lately?
GILBERT. Few of us escape it. People say that the schoolmaster is
abroad. I wish to goodness he were. But the type of which, after
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