| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: still looking at Archer.
In the carriage, on the way down Fifth Avenue, they
talked pointedly of Mrs. Mingott, of her age, her spirit,
and all her wonderful attributes. No one alluded to
Ellen Olenska; but Archer knew that Mrs. Welland
was thinking: "It's a mistake for Ellen to be seen, the
very day after her arrival, parading up Fifth Avenue at
the crowded hour with Julius Beaufort--" and the young
man himself mentally added: "And she ought to know
that a man who's just engaged doesn't spend his time
calling on married women. But I daresay in the set
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Popular dramas and operas may have overwhelming merits as
enchanting make-believes; but a poet's sincerest vision of the
world must always take precedence of his prettiest fool's
paradise.
As many English Wagnerites seem to be still under the impression
that Wagner composed Rienzi in his youth, Tannhauser and
Lohengrin in his middle age, and The Ring in his later years, may
I again remind them that The Ring was the result of a political
convulsion which occurred when Wagner was only thirty-six, and
that the poem was completed when he was forty, with thirty more
years of work before him? It is as much a first essay in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: finest measurements. Every scrap of solid matter in the world
would become an available reservoir of concentrated force. Do
you realise, ladies and gentlemen, what these things would mean
for us?'
The scrub head nodded. 'Oh! go on. Go on.'
'It would mean a change in human conditions that I can only
compare to the discovery of fire, that first discovery that
lifted man above the brute. We stand to-day towards
radio-activity as our ancestor stood towards fire before he had
learnt to make it. He knew it then only as a strange thing
utterly beyond his control, a flare on the crest of the volcano,
The Last War: A World Set Free |
