| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: superfices was composed of several bits of wood, about the
bigness of a die, but some larger than others. They were all
linked together by slender wires. These bits of wood were
covered, on every square, with paper pasted on them; and on these
papers were written all the words of their language, in their
several moods, tenses, and declensions; but without any order.
The professor then desired me "to observe; for he was going to
set his engine at work." The pupils, at his command, took each
of them hold of an iron handle, whereof there were forty fixed
round the edges of the frame; and giving them a sudden turn, the
whole disposition of the words was entirely changed. He then
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: spring flowers scattered here and there in Venice glasses and
bowls of old Sevres, recalled, she hardly knew why, the apartment
in which the evenings of her first marriage had been passed--a
wilderness of rosewood and upholstery, with a picture of a Roman
peasant above the mantel-piece, and a Greek slave in "statuary
marble" between the folding-doors of the back drawing-room. It
was a room with which she had never been able to establish any
closer relation than that between a traveller and a railway
station; and now, as she looked about at the surroundings which
stood for her deepest affinities--the room for which she had left
that other room--she was startled by the same sense of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!
An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable
an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week,
or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British
guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but
irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance
by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until
our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make
a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a
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