| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: There was even a singular little dignity in it, something that made
me release him, yet, when I had slowly risen, linger beside him.
God knows I never wished to harass him, but I felt that merely, at this,
to turn my back on him was to abandon or, to put it more truly, to lose him.
"I've just begun a letter to your uncle," I said.
"Well, then, finish it!"
I waited a minute. "What happened before?"
He gazed up at me again. "Before what?"
"Before you came back. And before you went away."
For some time he was silent, but he continued to meet my eyes.
"What happened?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: "Merciful heavens!" screamed Isaac.
The index registered only 133 grammes!
"You see, Hakkabut, I was right. I was perfectly justified in having
your goods put to the test," said Servadac, quite seriously.
"But--but, your Excellency--" stammered out the bewildered man.
"You will, of course, make up the deficiency," the captain continued,
not noticing the interruption.
"Oh, my lord, let me say--" began Isaac again.
"Come, come, old Caiaphas, do you hear? You are to make up the deficiency,"
exclaimed Ben Zoof.
"Ah, yes, yes; but--"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: it has no foundation for them, no hold of them; you may tease or
tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for
the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing
so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is
on;--nothing so great but it will forget in an hour, when the fit is
past. But a gentleman's, or a gentle nation's, passions are just,
measured, and continuous. A great nation, for instance, does not
spend its entire national wits for a couple of months in weighing
evidence of a single ruffian's having done a single murder; and for
a couple of years see its own children murder each other by their
thousands or tens of thousands a day, considering only what the
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