| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: the colonies with his great army, left them totally expos'd while
he paraded idly at Halifax, by which means Fort George was lost,
besides, he derang'd all our mercantile operations, and distress'd
our trade, by a long embargo on the exportation of provisions,
on pretence of keeping supplies from being obtain'd by the enemy,
but in reality for beating down their price in favor of the contractors,
in whose profits, it was said, perhaps from suspicion only, he had
a share. And, when at length the embargo was taken off, by neglecting
to send notice of it to Charlestown, the Carolina fleet was detain'd
near three months longer, whereby their bottoms were so much damaged
by the worm that a great part of them foundered in their passage home.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: are not his studio-imitators, but those who become like his works
of art, be they plastic as in Greek days, or pictorial as in modern
times; in a word, Life is Art's best, Art's only pupil.
As it is with the visible arts, so it is with literature. The most
obvious and the vulgarest form in which this is shown is in the
case of the silly boys who, after reading the adventures of Jack
Sheppard or Dick Turpin, pillage the stalls of unfortunate apple-
women, break into sweet-shops at night, and alarm old gentlemen who
are returning home from the city by leaping out on them in suburban
lanes, with black masks and unloaded revolvers. This interesting
phenomenon, which always occurs after the appearance of a new
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pathology of Lying, Etc. by William and Mary Healy: novels nor go to theatres. In all our work on tests and in our
several interviews with her we never discovered any signs of
aberrational tendencies. Her social conduct furnished the only
evidence of erraticism.
This young woman's mother, who is said to have been a normal
person, died a few months before we knew her daughter. She had
long been ill and consequently had had very imperfect control
over her daughter all through adolescence. The father had been
dead for several years previously; he was a storekeeper in a
small way, fairly educated and non-alcoholic. No other family
history of importance was ever forthcoming. There was only one
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