| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: MRS. CANDOUR. True, true, Child; but there's no stopping people's
Tongues. I own I was hurt to hear it--as I indeed was to learn
from the same quarter that your guardian, Sir Peter[,] and Lady
Teazle have not agreed lately so well as could be wish'd.
MARIA. 'Tis strangely impertinent for people to busy themselves so.
MRS. CANDOUR. Very true, Child; but what's to be done? People will
talk--there's no preventing it.--why it was but yesterday I was told
that Miss Gadabout had eloped with Sir Filagree Flirt. But, Lord!
there is no minding what one hears; tho' to be sure I had this from
very good authority.
MARIA. Such reports are highly scandalous.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led
the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I
remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in
silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him,
puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we
beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen
vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of
ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock
crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted
crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets
of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz
The Time Machine |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: you would have rolled over your reluctant shoulder towards the
house on Beretania Street! Had you gone on; had you found every
fourth face a blot upon the landscape; had you visited the hospital
and seen the butt-ends of human beings lying there almost
unrecognisable, but still breathing, still thinking, still
remembering; you would have understood that life in the lazaretto
is an ordeal from which the nerves of a man's spirit shrink, even
as his eye quails under the brightness of the sun; you would have
felt it was (even today) a pitiful place to visit and a hell to
dwell in. It is not the fear of possible infection. That seems a
little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, and the disgust
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