| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: see, but no superscription except Leadenhall Street, which is
rather vague. The point about the signature is very suggestive
--in fact, we may call it conclusive."
"Of what?"
"My dear fellow, is it possible you do not see how strongly it
bears upon the case?"
"I cannot say that I do unless it were that he wished to be able
to deny his signature if an action for breach of promise were
instituted."
"No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters,
which should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: The more thou see its colour fade away
Little by little till 'tis quite extinct;
As happens when the gaudy linen's picked
Shred after shred away: the purple there,
Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,
Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;
Hence canst perceive the fragments die away
From out their colour, long ere they depart
Back to the old primordials of things.
And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies
Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus
Of The Nature of Things |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: said Mr. Wentworth, with that dryness of utterance which,
as Eugenia was too intelligent not to feel, took nothing
from the delicacy of his meaning.
She looked at him, and for an instant, in his cold, still face,
she seemed to see a far-away likeness to the vaguely remembered
image of her mother. Eugenia was a woman of sudden emotions,
and now, unexpectedly, she felt one rising in her heart.
She kept looking round the circle; she knew that there
was admiration in all the eyes that were fixed upon her.
She smiled at them all.
"I came to look--to try--to ask," she said. "It seems
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