| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: Fishes are, of course, unable to live in it, and those which descend
through the Jordan, the Weber, and other streams soon perish.
The country around the lake was well cultivated, for the Mormons
are mostly farmers; while ranches and pens for domesticated animals,
fields of wheat, corn, and other cereals, luxuriant prairies,
hedges of wild rose, clumps of acacias and milk-wort,
would have been seen six months later. Now the ground
was covered with a thin powdering of snow.
The train reached Ogden at two o'clock, where it rested for six hours,
Mr. Fogg and his party had time to pay a visit to Salt Lake City,
connected with Ogden by a branch road; and they spent two hours
 Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: uncertainty: "We'll ask Mr. Ramy when he comes," and of accepting
his verdict, whatever it might be, with a fatalistic readiness that
relieved them of all responsibility.
When Mr. Ramy drew the pipe from his mouth and became, in his
turn, confidential, the acuteness of their sympathy grew almost
painful to the sisters. With passionate participation they
listened to the story of his early struggles in Germany, and of the
long illness which had been the cause of his recent misfortunes.
The name of the Mrs. Hochmuller (an old comrade's widow) who had
nursed him through his fever was greeted with reverential sighs and
an inward pang of envy whenever it recurred in his biographical
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: found that even there there was a history and a gossip which
never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably
this is the only house in the town where verses are
composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form,
but not published. I was shown quite a long list of young
men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who
avenged themselves by singing them.
I pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear
I should never see him again; but at length he showed me
which was my bed, and left me to blow out the lamp.
It was like travelling into a far country, such as I
 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |