| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran
round it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner,
and then stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair.
Above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white,
shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon. It seemed to
smile in mockery of my dismay.
`I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people
had put the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt
assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is
what dismayed me: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power,
through whose intervention my invention had vanished. Yet, for
The Time Machine |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: "Oh, it's only a shower," said Josephs, looking up cheerfully at
the unbroken curtain of cloud. "It will clear up presently."
"It ain't for a common man to set up his opinion again' a
gentleman wot have profesh'nal knowledge of the heavens, as one
may say," said the man, "but I would 'umbly offer to bet my
umbrellar to his wideawake that it don't cease raining this side
of seven o'clock."
"That man lives here," whispered Miss Wilson, "and I suppose he
wants to get rid of us."
"H'm!" said Fairholme. Then, turning to the strange laborer with
the air of a person not to be trifled with, he raised his voice,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: her honor, nay even her social existence; and she finds the
energy required for such an act of submission in the firmness of
her understanding and in the virile habits which her education
has given her. It may be said that she has learned by the use of
her independence to surrender it without a struggle and without a
murmur when the time comes for making the sacrifice. But no
American woman falls into the toils of matrimony as into a snare
held out to her simplicity and ignorance. She has been taught
beforehand what is expected of her, and voluntarily and freely
does she enter upon this engagement. She supports her new
condition with courage, because she chose it. As in America
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