| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: been George's wife! In all of these things something
high and good called to the poor lady, which she heard
and understood as a child would the voice of its mother.
One hour she resolved to leave her son with his wife, to
go back to Weir at once and work with the poultry and
Quigg's jokes for the rest of her life. She was dead.
Let her give up and consent to be dead.
The next, she would stay where she could see George
sometimes, and try to forgive the woman who had him in
her keeping. Perhaps, after all, she was human, as Clara
said. If she could forgive Lisa, she could be happy with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: `Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and
saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and
flittering up into the sky and, circling, disappear over some low
hillocks beyond. The sound of its voice was so dismal that I
shivered and seated myself more firmly upon the machine. Looking
round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a
reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw
the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you
imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs
moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long
antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling, and its
The Time Machine |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: Malaquais; to be able to ask a party of friends to dine at the Rocher
de Cancale without a previous consultation with your trousers' pocket;
never to be pulled up in any rational project by the words, 'And the
money?' and finally, to be able to renew at pleasure the pink rosettes
that adorn the ears of three thoroughbreds and the lining of your hat?
"To such inquiry any ordinary young man (and we ourselves that are not
ordinary men) would reply that the happiness is incomplete; that it is
like the Madeleine without the altar; that a man must love and be
loved, or love without return, or be loved without loving, or love at
cross purposes. Now for happiness as a mental condition.
"In January 1823, after Godefroid de Beaudenord had set foot in the
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