| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: Barbarossa.... Kurt fretted like an imprisoned animal about the
airship, now going up to the forward gallery under the eagle, now
down into the swinging gallery, now poring over his maps. He
infected Smallways with a sense of the immediacy of this battle
that was going on just over the curve of the earth. But when
Bert went down to the gallery the world was empty and still, a
clear inky-blue sky above and a rippled veil of still, thin
sunlit cirrus below, through which one saw a racing drift of
rain-cloud, and never a glimpse of sea. Throb, throb, throb,
throb, went the engines, and the long, undulating wedge of
airships hurried after the flagship like a flight of swans after
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: schooner righted slowly to an even keel. Meanwhile the junk had
set its one lug-sail and its crew had run out the sweeps. Hoang
took the steering sweep and worked the junk to a position right
across the "Bertha's" bows, some fifty feet ahead.
"They're watching us, right enough," said Wilbur.
"Up your mains'l," ordered Moran. The pair set the fore and main
sails with great difficulty. Moran took the wheel and Wilbur went
forward to cast off the line by which the schooner had been tied
up to one of the whale's flukes.
"Cut it!" cried the girl. "Don't stop to cast off."
There was a hail from the beach-combers; the port sweeps dipped
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: peristyle; his indifference had surprised me, but my amazement
increased when we came back and found him seated philosophically
at table. He had eaten pretty nearly all the dinner, to the huge
delight of his little daughter; the child was smiling at her
father's flagrant infraction of the Countess' rules. The man's
odd indifference was explained to me by a mild altercation which
at once arose with the canon. The Count was suffering from some
serious complaint. I cannot remember now what it was, but his
medical advisers had put him on a very severe regimen, and the
ferocious hunger familiar to convalescents, sheer animal
appetite, had overpowered all human sensibilities. In that little
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