| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: soil. This he at once proceeded to do, and had made a continuous line
of it all the way across a ten-acre field, when he was made to look
backward by a shout from the generous donor, who at once dropped a
lighted match into the furrow at the starting-point. Contact with the
earth had somewhat dampened the powder, but the startled functionary
saw himself pursued by a tall moving pillar of fire and smoke and
fierce evolution. He stood for a moment paralyzed and speechless,
then he recollected an engagement and, dropping all, absented himself
thence with such surprising celerity that to the eyes of spectators
along the route selected he appeared like a long, dim streak
prolonging itself with inconceivable rapidity through seven villages,
The Devil's Dictionary |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: the bell, and an elderly woman answered it; but before they could
address her, Trefusis appeared, clad in a painter's jacket of
white jean. Following him in, they found that the house was a
hollow square, enclosing a courtyard with a bath sunk in the
middle, and a fountain in the centre of the bath. The courtyard,
formerly open to the sky, was now roofed in with dusty glass; the
nymph that had once poured out the water of the fountain was
barren and mutilated; and the bath was partly covered in with
loose boards, the exposed part accommodating a heap of coals in
one corner, a heap of potatoes in another, a beer barrel, some
old carpets, a tarpaulin, and a broken canoe. The marble pavement
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: entrance into the world. We were a large family, of very
different dispositions and constitutions. Some were dull and
peevish--they were sent to Aunt Margaret to be amused; some were
rude, romping, and boisterous--they were sent to Aunt Margaret to
be kept quiet, or rather that their noise might be removed out of
hearing; those who were indisposed were sent with the prospect of
being nursed; those who were stubborn, with the hope of their
being subdued by the kindness of Aunt Margaret's discipline;--in
short, she had all the various duties of a mother, without the
credit and dignity of the maternal character. The busy scene of
her various cares is now over. Of the invalids and the robust,
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