| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: town, in which, and in its neighbourhood, there are as many
gentlemen of good fortunes and families as I believe can be met
with in so narrow a compass in any of the three counties of which I
make this circuit.
In the town of Witham dwells the Lord Pasely, oldest son of the
Earl of Abercorn of Ireland (a branch of the noble family of
Hamilton, in Scotland). His lordship has a small, but a neat,
well-built new house, and is finishing his gardens in such a manner
as few in that part of England will exceed them.
Nearer Chelmsford, hard by Boreham, lives the Lord Viscount
Barrington, who, though not born to the title, or estate, or name
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: with the best people he could find to look after them,
parting even with his own servants to wait on them and going
down himself, whenever he might, to see how they were doing.
The awkward thing was that they had practically no other
relations and that his own affairs took up all his time.
He had put them in possession of Bly, which was healthy and secure,
and had placed at the head of their little establishment--
but below stairs only--an excellent woman, Mrs. Grose,
whom he was sure his visitor would like and who had formerly been
maid to his mother. She was now housekeeper and was also acting
for the time as superintendent to the little girl, of whom,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: eminent persons. When I was a boy every well-known man was accused of
beating his wife. Later on, for some unexplained reason, he was
accused of psychopathic derangement. And this fashion is
retrospective. The cases of Shakespear and Michel Angelo are cited as
proving that every genius of the first magnitude was a sufferer; and
both here and in Germany there are circles in which such derangement
is grotesquely reverenced as part of the stigmata of heroic powers.
All of which is gross nonsense. Unfortunately, in Shakespear's case,
prudery, which cannot prevent the accusation from being whispered,
does prevent the refutation from being shouted. Mr Harris, the
deep-voiced, refuses to be silenced. He dismisses with proper
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