| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: and leading the way to the chaise and four, and walking immediately after
Lady Russell out of all the drawing-rooms and dining-rooms in the country.
Thirteen winters' revolving frosts had seen her opening every ball
of credit which a scanty neighbourhood afforded, and thirteen springs
shewn their blossoms, as she travelled up to London with her father,
for a few weeks' annual enjoyment of the great world. She had
the remembrance of all this, she had the consciousness of being
nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and some apprehensions;
she was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever,
but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced
to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: have heard of before, makes history a new possession. But we
thumbed our charts, on these evenings, with the blankest unconcern.
We cared not a fraction for this place or that. We stared at the
sheet as children listen to their rattle; and read the names of
towns or villages to forget them again at once. We had no romance
in the matter; there was nobody so fancy-free. If you had taken
the maps away while we were studying them most intently, it is a
fair bet whether we might not have continued to study the table
with the same delight.
About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eating. I
think I made a god of my belly. I remember dwelling in imagination
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: their scandal be it spoken. What the reason of it is I know not.
It is scarce possible to talk of anything in Cambridgeshire but
Cambridge itself; whether it be that the county has so little worth
speaking of in it, or, that the town has so much, that I leave to
others; however, as I am making modern observations, not writing
history, I shall look into the county, as well as into the
colleges, for what I have to say.
As I said, I first had a view of Cambridge from Gogmagog hills; I
am to add that there appears on the mountain that goes by this
name, an ancient camp or fortification, that lies on the top of the
hill, with a double, or rather treble, rampart and ditch, which
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