| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: and could not cross the Atlantic in time to save the wager.
Mr. Fogg learned all this in consulting his Bradshaw,
which gave him the daily movements of the trans-Atlantic steamers.
Passepartout was crushed; it overwhelmed him to lose the boat
by three-quarters of an hour. It was his fault, for,
instead of helping his master, he had not ceased putting obstacles
in his path! And when he recalled all the incidents of the tour,
when he counted up the sums expended in pure loss and on his own account,
when he thought that the immense stake, added to the heavy charges
of this useless journey, would completely ruin Mr. Fogg,
he overwhelmed himself with bitter self-accusations. Mr. Fogg,
Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at
every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is
therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed
sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. Certain it
is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and
from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of
the former evidently declined: his horse was no longer seen tied
to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually
arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.
Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature,
would fain have carried matters to open warfare and have settled
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: the liver-wing of Edinburgh. It is one of the most
common forms of depreciation to throw cold water on the
whole by adroit over-commendation of a part, since
everything worth judging, whether it be a man, a work of
art, or only a fine city, must be judged upon its merits
as a whole. The Old Town depends for much of its effect
on the new quarters that lie around it, on the
sufficiency of its situation, and on the hills that back
it up. If you were to set it somewhere else by itself,
it would look remarkably like Stirling in a bolder and
loftier edition. The point is to see this embellished
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