| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: But to Carol it was magic.
She was motoring with Kennicott, the car lumping through
darkness, the lights showing mud-puddles and ragged weeds
by the road. A train coming! A rapid chuck-a-chuck, chuck-
a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck. It was hurling past--the Pacific
Flyer, an arrow of golden flame. Light from the fire-box
splashed the under side of the trailing smoke. Instantly the
vision was gone; Carol was back in the long darkness; and
Kennicott was giving his version of that fire and wonder:
"No. 19. Must be 'bout ten minutes late."
In town, she listened from bed to the express whistling in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson: cast; and he, to ward himself, threw up the hand that held his
riding-rod.
"What, would ye beat a lassie, ye ugly - ?" cries she, and ran away
screaming as though he had struck her.
Next day word went about the country like wildfire that Mr. Henry
had beaten Jessie Broun within an inch of her life. I give it as
one instance of how this snowball grew, and one calumny brought
another; until my poor patron was so perished in reputation that he
began to keep the house like my lord. All this while, you may be
very sure, he uttered no complaints at home; the very ground of the
scandal was too sore a matter to be handled; and Mr. Henry was very
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: we are, the monotony of singing psalms would be as great an infliction as
the pains of hell, and might be even pleasantly interrupted by them. Where
are the actions worthy of rewards greater than those which are conferred on
the greatest benefactors of mankind? And where are the crimes which
according to Plato's merciful reckoning,--more merciful, at any rate, than
the eternal damnation of so-called Christian teachers,--for every ten years
in this life deserve a hundred of punishment in the life to come? We
should be ready to die of pity if we could see the least of the sufferings
which the writers of Infernos and Purgatorios have attributed to the
damned. Yet these joys and terrors seem hardly to exercise an appreciable
influence over the lives of men. The wicked man when old, is not, as Plato
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