| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: by the window, as before at Miss Lucy's."
Dr. Seward tried one or two skeleton keys, his mechanical
dexterity as a surgeon standing him in good stead.
Presently he got one to suit, after a little play back and
forward the bolt yielded, and with a rusty clang, shot back.
We pressed on the door, the rusty hinges creaked, and it
slowly opened. It was startlingly like the image conveyed to me
in Dr. Seward's diary of the opening of Miss Westenra's tomb,
I fancy that the same idea seemed to strike the others,
for with one accord they shrank back. The Professor was
the first to move forward, and stepped into the open door.
Dracula |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy: the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century
and three-quarters ago.
The world is very different now, for man holds in his mortal hands
the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life.
And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought
are still at issue around the globe. . .the belief that the rights of man
come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.
Let the word go forth from this time and place. . .to friend and foe alike. . .
that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. . .
born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: Never had he given them so terrible a wrestle as on the night of
the tenth of August, eighteen hundred and fifty-six. All the
waves of the excited Gulf thronged in as if to see, and lifted up
their voices, and pushed, and roared, until the cheniere was
islanded by such a billowing as no white man's eyes had ever
looked upon before. Grandly the oaks bore themselves, but every
fibre of their knotted thews was strained in the unequal contest,
and two of the giants were overthrown, upturning, as they fell,
roots coiled and huge as the serpent-limbs of Titans. Moved to
its entrails, all the islet trembled, while the sea magnified its
menace, and reached out whitely to the prostrate trees; but the
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