| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain: the length and circumference of a man's leg; they
walked all about it, wondering and admiring, and
presently left it by one of the numerous passages that
opened into it. This shortly brought them to a be-
witching spring, whose basin was incrusted with a
frostwork of glittering crystals; it was in the midst of
a cavern whose walls were supported by many fan-
tastic pillars which had been formed by the joining
of great stalactites and stalagmites together, the result
of the ceaseless water-drip of centuries. Under the
roof vast knots of bats had packed themselves together,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: the principal personages of Carentan, assembled in the evening at the
house of the mayor's brother, an old married merchant, a man of strict
integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown
much esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow
had a tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected
to turn to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted.
The public prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return
by night of Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced
that a priest who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and
asked for asylum; but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare
embarrassed the good mayor not a little. The judge of the district
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: the mud, and still spasmodically struggling. Instantly, as though
it had divined the neighbourhood of help, the poor beast began to
neigh most piercingly. It rolled, meanwhile, a blood-shot eye,
insane with terror; and as it sprawled wallowing in the quag,
clouds of stinging insects rose and buzzed about it in the air.
"Alack!" thought Dick, "can the poor lad have perished? There is
his horse, for certain - a brave grey! Nay, comrade, if thou
criest to me so piteously, I will do all man can to help thee.
Shalt not lie there to drown by inches!"
And he made ready his crossbow, and put a quarrel through the
creature's head.
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