| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: did on the 20th, taking the British fleet aback), appearances of
westerly weather go for nothing, and that it is infinitely more
likely to veer right round to the east than to shift back again.
It was in those conditions that, at seven on the morning of the
21st, the signal for the fleet to bear up and steer east was made.
Holding a clear recollection of these languid easterly sighs
rippling unexpectedly against the run of the smooth swell, with no
other warning than a ten-minutes' calm and a queer darkening of the
coast-line, I cannot think, without a gasp of professional awe, of
that fateful moment. Perhaps personal experience, at a time of
life when responsibility had a special freshness and importance,
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: minutes after ten, with McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at
the door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being admitted
slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were
glistening with excitement, and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave
him a peculiarly villainous and stealthy expression.
"They're here," he said, "two of 'em, and that crazy Stuart wasn't
on, and said you were somewhere in the building."
A door slammed outside, followed by steps on the uncarpeted outer
office.
"This way," said Blobs, in a husky undertone, and, darting into a
lavatory, threw open a door that I had always supposed locked.
The Man in Lower Ten |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: Instability of the Homogeneous. The various manifestations of this
law, as shown in the normal, regular revolutions and evolutions of
the different forms of government, (8) are expounded with great
clearness by Polybius, who claimed for his theory, in the
Thucydidean spirit, that it is a [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], not a mere [Greek text which cannot be reproduced],
and that a knowledge of it will enable the impartial observer (9)
to discover at any time what period of its constitutional evolution
any particular state has already reached and into what form it will
be next differentiated, though possibly the exact time of the
changes may be more or less uncertain. (10)
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