| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: wine which he said was the very same one drank in just
such jolly places in France.
Charity did not think the wine as good as sarsaparilla,
but she sipped a mouthful for the pleasure of doing
what he did, and of fancying herself alone with him in
foreign countries. The illusion was increased by their
being served by a deep-bosomed woman with smooth hair
and a pleasant laugh, who talked to Harney in
unintelligible words, and seemed amazed and overjoyed
at his answering her in kind. At the other tables
other people sat, mill-hands probably, homely but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: reason to suppose that, in the century before the taking of Constantinople,
much more was in existence than the scholars of the Renaissance carried
away with them to Italy.
The character of Greek literature sank lower as time went on. It consisted
more and more of compilations, of scholia, of extracts, of commentaries,
forgeries, imitations. The commentator or interpreter had no conception of
his author as a whole, and very little of the context of any passage which
he was explaining. The least things were preferred by him to the greatest.
The question of a reading, or a grammatical form, or an accent, or the uses
of a word, took the place of the aim or subject of the book. He had no
sense of the beauties of an author, and very little light is thrown by him
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Finished by H. Rider Haggard: to see him in order to give him some rather important
information, but when I reached a kraal of about fifty huts some
five hundred yards from the site of the present Residency, my
wagon stuck fast in the boggy ground. While l was trying to get
it out a quiet-faced Zulu, whose name, I remember, was Umnikwa,
informed me that Malimati, that is Sir Melmoth Osborn's native
name, was somewhere at a little distance from Eshowe, too far
away for me to get to him that night. I answered, Very well, I
would sleep where I was, and asked the name of the kraal.
He replied, Jazi, at which l started, but only said that it was a
strange name, seeing that it meant "Finished," or "Finished with
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