| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon, which
gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room.
With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a
change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage
was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her
assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she
expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be
revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.
"My dear," she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, "most of these
fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a
woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me the
The Great Gatsby |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: the little island; it was manifestly impossible, they conceived,
that any human being could there have survived the cold;
the sad presentiment forced itself upon their minds that it
was a mere cairn to which they had been hurrying.
Ten minutes later, and they were so near the rock that
the lieutenant took in his sail, convinced that the impetus
already attained would be sufficient to carry him to the land.
Servadac's heart bounded as he caught sight of a fragment of blue
canvas fluttering in the wind from the top of the pylone:
it was all that now remained of the French national standard.
At the foot of the pylone stood a miserable shed, its shutters
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Martin's Ferry, Ohio, from 0 to 296--and many more of the same
kind. There were literally hundreds of such towns; there would
be reports from half a dozen of them in a single batch of
telegrams. And the men who read the despatches off to the
audience were old campaigners, who had been to the places and
helped to make the vote, and could make appropriate comments:
Quincy, Illinois, from 189 to 831--that was where the mayor had
arrested a Socialist speaker! Crawford County, Kansas, from 285
to 1,975; that was the home of the "Appeal to Reason"! Battle
Creek, Michigan, from 4,261 to 10,184; that was the answer of
labor to the Citizens' Alliance Movement!
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