| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: if they had told him of some serious event. "What I particularly
like in your definition of the hyperbola (I was going to say
hyperblague) is that it is still more obscure than the word you
pretend to define."
Nicholl and Barbicane cared little for Michel Ardan's fun.
They were deep in a scientific discussion. What curve would
the projectile follow? was their hobby. One maintained the
hyperbola, the other the parabola. They gave each other reasons
bristling with _x_. Their arguments were couched in language
which made Michel jump. The discussion was hot, and neither
would give up his chosen curve to his adversary.
From the Earth to the Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: Communist Party itself and uniting in opinion, though not in
voting, the Mensheviks and a section of their Communist
opponents. This cleavage is over the question of "workers'
control." Most of those who, before the revolution, looked
forward to the "workers' control", thought of it as meaning
that the actual workers in a given factory would themselves
control that factory, just as a board of directors controls a
factory under the ordinary capitalist system. The
Communists, I think, even today admit the ultimate
desirability of this, but insist that the important question is
not who shall give the orders, but in whose interest the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: and a big noose that was in the end of it settled over the arms and
body of Santa Claus and drew tight. Before he could resist or even
cry out he was jerked from the seat of the sleigh and tumbled head
foremost into a snowbank, while the reindeer rushed onward with the
load of toys and carried it quickly out of sight and sound.
Such a surprising experience confused old Santa for a moment, and when
he had collected his senses he found that the wicked Daemons had
pulled him from the snowdrift and bound him tightly with many coils of
the stout rope. And then they carried the kidnapped Santa Claus away
to their mountain, where they thrust the prisoner into a secret cave
and chained him to the rocky wall so that he could not escape.
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
