| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: we have, for then men sleep, and only a dozing watch nods
in the tops of the battleships. No watch is kept upon the
cruisers and smaller craft. The watchers upon the larger
vessels see to all about them. It is night now."
"But," I exclaimed, "it is not dark! How can it be night, then?"
He smiled.
"You forget," he said, "that we are far below ground.
The light of the sun never penetrates here. There are
no moons and no stars reflected in the bosom of Omean.
The phosphorescent light you now see pervading this great
subterranean vault emanates from the rocks that form its dome;
The Gods of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: his difference from other Cordelia Street boys; and he felt a good
deal more manly, more honest, even, now that he had no need for
boastful pretensions, now that he could, as his actor friends used
to say, "dress the part." It was characteristic that remorse did
not occur to him. His golden days went by without a shadow, and he
made each as perfect as he could.
On the eighth day after his arrival in New York he found the whole
affair exploited in the Pittsburgh papers, exploited with a wealth
of detail which indicated that local news of a sensational nature
was at a low ebb. The firm of Denny & Carson announced that the
boy's father had refunded the full amount of the theft and that
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: of the head of a man who was assassinated about sixty
years ago. The stab-wounds in the face were duplicated
with unpleasant fidelity. One or two real hairs
still remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast.
That trifle seemed to almost change the counterfeit into
a corpse.
There are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless;
some of great interest, some of none at all. I bought a
couple--one a gorgeous duke of the olden time, and the other
a comely blue-eyed damsel, a princess, maybe. I bought
them to start a portrait-gallery of my ancestors with.
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