| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: some hours to run, the hall lamps had been lighted and left
burning. Plainly, then, guests were expected, and were not
expected before night. For whom, I asked myself with
indignation, were such secret preparations likely to be made?
Although no prude, I am a woman of decided views upon
morality; if my house, to which my husband had brought me,
was to serve in the character of a PETITE MAISON, I saw
myself forced, however unwillingly, into a new course of
litigation; and, determined to return and know the worst, I
hastened to my hotel for dinner.
I was at my post by ten. The night was clear and quiet; the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: went to Florida. I could think more quietly. My writing had come to be
quite often accepted, sometimes even solicited. Should I speak to her,
and ask her to wait until I could put a decent roof over her head, or
should I keep away from her until I could offer such a roof? Her father,
I supposed, could do something for us. But I was not willing to be a
pensioner. His business--were he generous--would be to provide cake and
butter; but the bread was to be mine and bread was still a long way off,
according to New York standards. These things I thought over while she
was in Florida; yet when once I should I find myself with her again, I
began to fear that I could not hold myself from--but these are
circumstances which universal knowledge renders it needless to mention,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: which a stranger might ask; yet it is a very safe bet
that two of the three answers would be incorrect every time.
There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing
courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or
rising up from it. This bow startles a stranger out of his
self-possession, the first time it occurs, and he is likely
to fall over a chair or something, in his embarrassment,
but it pleases him, nevertheless. One soon learns to expect
this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it;
but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow
one's self is a difficult matter for a diffident man.
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