| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: or driven away from those I came across, happily towards evening I
perceived a wretched little Polish farm, of which nothing can give you
any idea unless you have seen the wooden houses of Lower Normandy, or
the poorest farm-buildings of la Beauce. These dwellings consist of a
single room, with one end divided off by a wooden partition, the
smaller division serving as a store-room for forage.
"In the darkness of twilight I could just see a faint smoke rising
above this house. Hoping to find there some comrades more
compassionate than those I had hitherto addressed, I boldly walked as
far as the farm. On going in, I found the table laid. Several
officers, and with them a woman--a common sight enough--were eating
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Herland by Charlotte Gilman: peacefully brought back again without, as Terry complained,
even the satisfaction of hitting anybody.
There were no adventures because there was nothing to fight.
There were no wild beasts in the country and very few tame ones.
Of these I might as well stop to describe the one common
pet of the country. Cats, of course. But such cats!
What do you suppose these Lady Burbanks had done with
their cats? By the most prolonged and careful selection and
exclusion they had developed a race of cats that did not sing!
That's a fact. The most those poor dumb brutes could do was to
make a kind of squeak when they were hungry or wanted the door open,
Herland |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: it!"
They had, Babbitt perceived, "something on him." Also, they "had their
kidding clothes on." Ordinarily he would have been delighted at the honor
implied in being chaffed, but he was suddenly touchy. He grunted, "Yuh, sure;
maybe I'll take you guys on as office boys!" He was impatient as the jest
elaborately rolled on to its denouement.
"Of course he may have been meeting a girl," they said, and "No, I think he
was waiting for his old roommate, Sir Jerusalem Doak."
He exploded, "Oh, spring it, spring it, you boneheads! What's the great joke?"
"Hurray! George is peeved!" snickered Sidney Finkelstein, while a grin went
round the table. Gunch revealed the shocking truth: He had seen Babbitt
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