| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: if this storm were destined to blow us across thirty, or
send us to the bottom of the ocean, no help could reach us
in time to prevent it. I had ordered the message sent
solely because regulations required it, and not with any
particular hope that we could benefit by it in our present
extremity.
I had little time to dwell upon the coincidence of the
simultaneous failure of the wireless and the buoyancy
generators, since very shortly after the Coldwater had
dropped so low over the waters that all my attention was
necessarily centered upon the delicate business of settling
Lost Continent |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: short, we had so much to talk about. We climbed hills where we
could see the great bay and the islands, and then went down into
shady valleys where the air began to feel like evening, cool and
camp with a fragrance of wet ferns. Mrs. Todd alighted once or
twice, refusing all assistance in securing some boughs of a rare
shrub which she valued for its bark, though she proved
incommunicative as to her reasons. We passed the house where we
had been so kindly entertained with doughnuts earlier in the day,
and found it closed and deserted, which was a disappointment.
"They must have stopped to tea somewheres and thought they'd
finish up the day," said Mrs. Todd. "Those that enjoyed it best'll
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: I shall not weep, nor will a word be said,
But I shall kneel before you, oh my king,
And bind my brow forever with a thorn.
TO A CASTILIAN SONG
WE held the book together timidly,
Whose antique music in an alien tongue
Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung
Beneath a high Castilian balcony.
I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy,
And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung,
And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung
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