| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: an automatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long
endure. Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my
difficulties. The several big palaces I had explored were mere
living places, great dining-halls and sleeping apartments. I
could find no machinery, no appliances of any kind. Yet these
people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need
renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly
complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be
made. And the little people displayed no vestige of a creative
tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no sign of
importations among them. They spent all their time in playing
The Time Machine |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: but surely I shall see him before night: I feared the meeting in
the morning; now I desire it, because expectation has been so long
baffled that it is grown impatient."
When dusk actually closed, and when Adele left me to go and play in
the nursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened
for the bell to ring below; I listened for Leah coming up with a
message; I fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester's own tread, and
I turned to the door, expecting it to open and admit him. The door
remained shut; darkness only came in through the window. Still it
was not late; he often sent for me at seven and eight o'clock, and
it was yet but six. Surely I should not be wholly disappointed to-
Jane Eyre |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her than I ever
had been before or ever have been since. Yes, I remember
my emotions in their order, even including a curious little
tremor that took me when I saw that the niece was not there.
With her, the day before, I had become sufficiently familiar,
but it almost exceeded my courage (much s I had longed for the event)
to be left alone with such a terrible relic as the aunt.
She was too strange, too literally resurgent. Then came a check,
with the perception that we were not really face to face,
inasmuch as she had over her eyes a horrible green shade which,
for her, served almost as a mask. I believed for the instant
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