| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: is lacking here. Mabuse said so himself with vexation in his sober
moments."
Poussin looked alternately at the old man and at Porbus with uneasy
curiosity. He turned to the latter as if to ask the name of their
host, but the painter laid a finger on his lips with an air of
mystery, and the young man, keenly interested, kept silence, hoping
that sooner or later some word of the conversation might enable him to
guess the name of the old man, whose wealth and genius were
sufficiently attested by the respect which Porbus showed him, and by
the marvels of art heaped together in the picturesque apartment.
Poussin, observing against the dark panelling of the wall a
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: then, was still alone, and still waiting for the Pug. She glanced
sharply around her. There was only darkness. Her gloved right hand
was hidden in the folds of her skirt; she raised her left hand and
knocked softly upon the door-two raps, one rap, two raps. She
repeated it. And as it had been with Shluker, so it was now with
her. A footstep crossed the floor within, the key turned in the
lock, and the door was flung open.
"All right, Pug," said Pinkie Bonn, "I -"
The man's words ended in a gasp of surprised amazement. With a
quick step forward, Rhoda Gray was in the room. Her revolver,
suddenly outflung, covered the other; and her free hand, reaching
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthydemus by Plato: ready to answer what they said a year ago, but is 'non-plussed' at what
they are saying now. 'What does the word "non-plussed" mean?' Socrates is
informed, in reply, that words are lifeless things, and lifeless things
have no sense or meaning. Ctesippus again breaks out, and again has to be
pacified by Socrates, who renews the conversation with Cleinias. The two
Sophists are like Proteus in the variety of their transformations, and he,
like Menelaus in the Odyssey, hopes to restore them to their natural form.
He had arrived at the conclusion that Cleinias must become a philosopher.
And philosophy is the possession of knowledge; and knowledge must be of a
kind which is profitable and may be used. What knowledge is there which
has such a nature? Not the knowledge which is required in any particular
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