| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: Susan?"
"I hope so, if the name's an essential. Even if Nick chucks me,
don't count on me to carry out that programme. I've seen it in
practice too often."
"Oh, well: as far as I know, everybody's in perfect health at
Altringham." He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a fountain
pen, a handkerchief over which it had leaked, and a packet of
dishevelled cigarettes. Lighting one, and restoring the other
objects to his pocket, he continued calmly: "Tell me how did
you manage to smooth things over with the Gillows? Ursula was
running amuck when I was in Newport last Summer; it was just
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: to stand on, or perish in the attempt; and Holmes would watch,
through the quiet, bright mornings, the frantic ambition of the
successful aspirant with an amused smile.
"One 'd thenk," said Lois, sagely, "a chicken never stood on a
wall before, to hear 'em, or a hen laid an egg."
Nor did Holmes smile once because the chicken burlesqued man: his
thought was too single for that yet. It was long, too, before he
thought of the people who came in quietly to see him as anything
but shadows, or wished for them to come again. Lois, perhaps,
was the most real thing in life then to him: growing conscious,
day by day, as he watched her, of his old life over the gulf.
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: the social and political condition of a people and the genius of
its authors are always very numerous: whoever knows the one is
never completely ignorant of the other.
Chapter XIV: The Trade Of Literature
Democracy not only infuses a taste for letters among the
trading classes, but introduces a trading spirit into literature.
In aristocracies, readers are fastidious and few in number; in
democracies, they are far more numerous and far less difficult to
please. The consequence is, that among aristocratic nations, no
one can hope to succeed without immense exertions, and that these
exertions may bestow a great deal of fame, but can never earn
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