| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: study, we think less of Sir Bernard Burke and more of Mr. Galton.
Not only do our character and talents lie upon the anvil and
receive their temper during generations; but the very plot of our
life's story unfolds itself on a scale of centuries, and the
biography of the man is only an episode in the epic of the family.
From this point of view I ask the reader's leave to begin this
notice of a remarkable man who was my friend, with the accession of
his great-grandfather, John Jenkin.
This John Jenkin, a grandson of Damaris Kingsley, of the family of
'Westward Ho!' was born in 1727, and married Elizabeth, daughter of
Thomas Frewen, of Church House, Northiam. The Jenkins had now been
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: and rolled over so that his back was toward the Woozy. But the Lion,
regarding the two calmly with his great, yellow eyes, said to the dog,
"My dear Toto, our friends have taught us a lesson in humility. If
the Woozy and the Mule are indeed beautiful creatures as they seem to
think, you and I must be decidedly ugly."
"Not to ourselves," protested Toto, who was a shrewd little dog. "You
and I, Lion, are fine specimens of our own races. I am a fine dog,
and you are a fine lion. Only in point of comparison, one with
another, can we be properly judged, so I will leave it to the poor old
Sawhorse to decide which is the most beautiful animal among us all.
The Sawhorse is wood, so he won't be prejudiced and will speak the
The Lost Princess of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: well. The young woman nervously pressed my hand, as if she were trying
to avoid a precipice, and shivered when that man, at whom she happened
to be looking, turned upon her two lifeless, sea-green eyes, which
could be compared to nothing save tarnished mother-of-pearl.
"I am afraid," she said, putting her lips to my ear.
"You can speak," I replied; "he hears with great difficulty."
"You know him, then?"
"Yes."
Thereupon she summoned courage to scrutinize for a moment that
creature for which no human language has a name, form without
substance, a being without life, or life without action. She was under
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