| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The School For Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan: had the least idea of what you charge me with, upon my honour.
SURFACE. Well it will give Sir Peter great satisfaction to hear this.
CHARLES. [Aloud.] To be sure, I once thought the lady seemed
to have taken a fancy--but upon my soul I never gave her the least
encouragement.--Beside you know my Attachment to Maria--
SURFACE. But sure Brother even if Lady Teazle had betray'd the
fondest Partiality for you----
CHARLES. Why--look'ee Joseph--I hope I shall never deliberately
do a dishonourable Action--but if a pretty woman was purposely
to throw herself in my way--and that pretty woman married to a man
old enough to be her Father----
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: Alexander's toward the Jews, which was pursued steadily by the
Ptolemies, by Pompey, and by the Romans, as long as these same Jews
continued to be endurable upon the face of the land. At least, we shall
find the history of Alexandria and that of Judea inextricably united for
more than three hundred years.
So arose, at the command of the great conqueror, a mighty city, around
those two harbours, of which the western one only is now in use. The
Pharos was then an island. It was connected with the mainland by a
great mole, furnished with forts and drawbridges. On the ruins of that
mole now stands the greater part of the modern city; the vast site of
the ancient one is a wilderness.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: too, with its mirror, turbaned after the manner of the beginning
of the century, with a coiffure of murrey-coloured silk, and its
hundred strange-shaped boxes, providing for arrangements which
had been obsolete for more than fifty years, had an antique, and
in so far a melancholy, aspect. But nothing could blaze more
brightly and cheerfully than the two large wax candles; or if
aught could rival them, it was the flaming, bickering fagots in
the chimney, that sent at once their gleam and their warmth
through the snug apartment, which, notwithstanding the general
antiquity of its appearance, was not wanting in the least
convenience that modern habits rendered either necessary or
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