| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: any happy result? Had the shock been deadened, thanks to the
springs, the four plugs, the water-cushions, and the partition-breaks?
Had they been able to subdue the frightful pressure of the initiatory
speed of more than 11,000 yards, which was enough to traverse Paris
or New York in a second? This was evidently the question suggested
to the thousand spectators of this moving scene. They forgot the
aim of the journey, and thought only of the travelers. And if
one of them-- Joseph T. Maston for example-- could have cast one
glimpse into the projectile, what would he have seen?
Nothing then. The darkness was profound. But its cylindro-
conical partitions had resisted wonderfully. Not a rent or a
From the Earth to the Moon |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: doubt, Katharine, in your own mind? Cassandra is in our charge, and I
don't intend that people should gossip about her. I suggest that you
should be a little more careful in future. Invite me to your next
entertainment."
She did not respond, as he had hoped, with any affectionate or
humorous reply. She meditated, pondering something or other, and he
reflected that even his Katharine did not differ from other women in
the capacity to let things be. Or had she something to say?
"Have you a guilty conscience?" he inquired lightly. "Tell me,
Katharine," he said more seriously, struck by something in the
expression of her eyes.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Too venturous poesy, O why essay
To pipe again of passion! fold thy wings
O'er daring Icarus and bid thy lay
Sleep hidden in the lyre's silent strings
Till thou hast found the old Castalian rill,
Or from the Lesbian waters plucked drowned Sappho's golden quid!
Enough, enough that he whose life had been
A fiery pulse of sin, a splendid shame,
Could in the loveless land of Hades glean
One scorching harvest from those fields of flame
Where passion walks with naked unshod feet
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