| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They
tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can
recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I
shammed illness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just
outside my cell. I thought to make my escape by boring a hole through
the wall and swimming for my life. I based my hopes on the following
reasons.
"Every time that the jailer came with my food, there was light enough
to read directions written on the walls--'Side of the Palace,' 'Side
of the Canal,' 'Side of the Vaults.' At last I saw a design in this,
but I did not trouble myself much about the meaning of it; the actual
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: and blue were the Surrey hills, and the towers of the
Crystal Palace glittered like two silver rods. The dome of
St. Paul's was dark against the sunrise, and injured, I saw for
the first time, by a huge gaping cavity on its western
side.
And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and fac-
tories and churches, silent and abandoned; as I thought of
the multitudinous hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts
of lives that had gone to build this human reef, and of the
swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over it all; when
I realised that the shadow had been rolled back, and that
War of the Worlds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: "'HEAR, therefore, what I shall impart with attention, such as the
welfare of a world requires. If the task of a king be considered
as difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he
cannot do much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him on
whom depends the action of the elements and the great gifts of
light and heat? Hear me, therefore, with attention.
"'I have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun,
and formed innumerable schemes, in which I changed their situation.
I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes
varied the ecliptic of the sun, but I have found it impossible to
make a disposition by which the world may be advantaged; what one
|
