| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: must amount to many thousands) must have perished,
instead of less than a hundred: as it was, the invariable
practice of running out of doors at the first trembling of the
ground, alone saved them. In Concepcion each house, or
row of houses, stood by itself, a heap or line of ruins; but in
Talcahuano, owing to the great wave, little more than one
layer of bricks, tiles, and timber with here and there part of
a wall left standing, could be distinguished. From this
circumstance Concepcion, although not so completely desolated,
was a more terrible, and if I may so call it, picturesque sight.
The first shock was very sudden. The mayor-domo at Quiriquina
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: "In a moment," replied Maston. Then, dashing off some
algebraical formulae with marvelous facility, in a minute or two
he declared the following result:
"The cannon will weigh 68,040 tons. And, at two cents a pound,
it will cost----"
"Two million five hundred and ten thousand seven hundred and
one dollars."
Maston, the major, and the general regarded Barbicane with
uneasy looks.
"Well, gentlemen," replied the president, "I repeat what I
said yesterday. Make yourselves easy; the millions will not
From the Earth to the Moon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Study of a Woman by Honore de Balzac: Consequently, he is held to be one of the best husbands in France.
Though not susceptible of lively interest, he never scolds, unless, to
be sure, he is kept waiting. His friends have named him "dull
weather,"--aptly enough, for there is neither clear light nor total
darkness about him. He is like all the ministers who have succeeded
one another in France since the Charter. A woman with principles could
not have fallen into better hands. It is certainly a great thing for a
virtuous woman to have married a man incapable of follies.
Occasionally some fops have been sufficiently impertinent to press the
hand of the marquise while dancing with her. They gained nothing in
return but contemptuous glances; all were made to feel the shock of
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