| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: or less falsetto on any of the trite topics; but it was his specially
to have a generous taste in eating. This was what was most
indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; and I found in
his company what I had long suspected, that enthusiasm and special
knowledge are the great social qualities, and what they are about,
whether white sauce or Shakespeare's plays, an altogether secondary
question.
I used to accompany the Conductor on his professional rounds, and
grew to believe myself an expert in the business. I thought I could
make an entry in a stone-breaker's time-book, or order manure off the
wayside with any living engineer in France. Gondet was one of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: it was exerted.
To avoid this dangerous imputation, scholars
sometimes divest themselves with too much haste
of their academical formality, and in their
endeavours to accommodate their notions and their style
to common conceptions, talk rather of any thing
than of that which they understand, and sink into
insipidity of sentiment and meanness of expression.
There prevails among men of letters an opinion,
that all appearance of science is particularly hateful
to women; and that therefore, whoever desires to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: This lamp, these books, this fire
Are suddenly blown away in a whistling darkness.
Deep walls crash down in the whirlwind of desire.
XII. WITCHES' SABBATH
Now, when the moon slid under the cloud
And the cold clear dark of starlight fell,
He heard in his blood the well-known bell
Tolling slowly in heaves of sound,
Slowly beating, slowly beating,
Shaking its pulse on the stagnant air:
Sometimes it swung completely round,
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