| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: Athos bowed, and prepared to absorb greedily the words which
fell, one by one, from the mouth of Monk, -- those words
rare and precious as the dew in the desert.
"You spoke to me," said Monk, "of Charles II.; but pray,
monsieur, of what consequence to me is that phantom of a
king? I have grown old in a war and in a policy which are
nowadays so closely linked together, that every man of the
sword must fight in virtue of his rights or his ambition
with a personal interest, and not blindly behind an officer,
as in ordinary wars. For myself, I perhaps desire nothing,
but I fear much. In the war of to-day rests the liberty of
Ten Years Later |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: tell which book she wanted to read in bed, poetry, biography, or
metaphysics.
"What do you read in bed, Katharine?" she asked, as they walked
upstairs side by side.
"Sometimes one thing--sometimes another," said Katharine vaguely.
Cassandra looked at her.
"D'you know, you're extraordinarily queer," she said. "Every one seems
to me a little queer. Perhaps it's the effect of London."
"Is William queer, too?" Katharine asked.
"Well, I think he is a little," Cassandra replied. "Queer, but very
fascinating. I shall read Milton to-night. It's been one of the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: blackmail in matters intellectual. Sooner or later----"
"Really!" cried Lousteau, "where do you come from? For what do you
take Finot? Beneath his pretence of good-nature, his ignorance and
stupidity, and those Turcaret's airs of his, there is all the cunning
of his father the hatter. Did you notice an old soldier of the Empire
in the den at the office? That is Finot's uncle. The uncle is not only
one of the right sort, he has the luck to be taken for a fool; and he
takes all that kind of business upon his shoulders. An ambitious man
in Paris is well off indeed if he has a willing scapegoat at hand. In
public life, as in journalism, there are hosts of emergencies in which
the chiefs cannot afford to appear. If Finot should enter on a
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