| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: The game that had been interrupted by Captain Servadac's former visit
was not yet concluded; but, like the two American clubs that played
their celebrated game in 1846 between Washington and Baltimore,
the two gallant officers made use of the semaphore to communicate
their well-digested moves.
The major stood waiting for his visitor to speak.
"Major Oliphant, I believe?" said Servadac, with a courteous bow.
"Yes, sir, Major Oliphant, officer in command of the garrison
at Ceuta," was the Englishman's reply. "And to whom," he added,
"may I have the honor of speaking?"
"To Captain Servadac, the governor general of Gallia."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the oldest animal
on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it
was usually to make some cynical remark--for instance, he would say that
God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner
have had no tail and no flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he
never laughed. If asked why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at.
Nevertheless, without openly admitting it, he was devoted to Boxer; the
two of them usually spent their Sundays together in the small paddock
beyond the orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking.
The two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings, which had
lost their mother, filed into the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering from
Animal Farm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: doing so he committed a capital blunder,--one that would have ruined
the whole life of a man of less wealth and less consistency than
himself, and from which came the evils, both small and great, with
which the present history teems. Brought up in the imperial school,
accustomed to deal with men as a dictator, and full of contempt for
"civilians," Montcornet did not trouble himself to wear gloves when it
came to putting a rascal of a land-steward out of doors. Civil life
and its precautions were things unknown to the soldier already
embittered by his loss of rank. He humiliated Gaubertin ruthlessly,
though the latter drew the harsh treatment upon himself by a cynical
reply which roused Montcornet's anger.
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