The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: her comfortably disposed that he failed to notice the little
package that had worked from his pocket as he assisted in lowering
the sling that contained the old woman over the steamer's side,
nor did he notice it even as it slipped out entirely and dropped
into the sea.
Scarcely had the boat containing the boy and the old woman
started for the shore than Condon hailed a canoe upon the other
side of the ship, and after bargaining with its owner finally
lowered his baggage and himself aboard. Once ashore he kept out
of sight of the two-story atrocity that bore the legend "Hotel"
to lure unsuspecting wayfarers to its multitudinous discomforts.
 The Son of Tarzan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: On the other hand, when we find a portion of an are on the outside
of our own, we say it INTERSECTS ours, but are very slow to confess
or to see that it CIRCUMSCRIBES it. Every now and then a man's
mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks
back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt
that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its
elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I
had to spread these to fit it.
- If I thought I should ever see the Alps! - said the
schoolmistress.
Perhaps you will, some time or other, - I said.
 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: good company, that I began to be almost reconciled to my
residence at Shaws; and nothing but the sight of my uncle, and
his eyes playing hide and seek with mine, revived the force of my
distrust.
One thing I discovered, which put me in some doubt. This was an
entry on the fly-leaf of a chap-book (one of Patrick Walker's)
plainly written by my father's hand and thus conceived: "To my
brother Ebenezer on his fifth birthday" Now, what puzzled me was
this: That, as my father was of course the younger brother, he
must either have made some strange error, or he must have
written, before he was yet five, an excellent, clear manly hand
 Kidnapped |