| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: with us, everything's done by private enterprise--and then
there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it.
I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old
slab once--you'd see it take a different gait from this."
I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there
was trade enough to justify it.
"He'd MAKE trade," said Harris. "That's the difference
between governments and individuals. Governments don't care,
individuals do. Tom Scott would take all the trade;
in two years Gorner stock would go to two hundred,
and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked
within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into
his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on
his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that
contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah
feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the
whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.
"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly
oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the
wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and
all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity
Moby Dick |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: honest wife on the other, a house as clean and smart as a new pin! And
he growls like a pilgrim smarting from Saint Anthony's fire!"
"Hey day!" exclaimed the sergeant of the watch, "do you fancy,
Jacqueline, that I have any wish to see my house razed down, my
halbert given to another, and my wife standing in the pillory?"
Jacqueline and the dainty journeywoman turned pale.
"Just tell me what you are driving at," said the washerwoman sharply,
"and make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed
that you have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then,
and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear
any harm when you have only to guard the common council and live under
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