| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: airtight, and the air pumped in or out, and the weight of fuel I
carried changed. I talked much and boasted to Cothope--whom I
suspected of scepticisms about this new type--of what it would
do, and it progressed--slowly. It progressed slowly because I
was restless and uncertain. At times I would go away to London
to snatch some chance of seeing Beatrice there, at times nothing
but a day of gliding and hard and dangerous exercise would
satisfy me. And now in the newspapers, in conversation, in
everything about me, arose a new invader of my mental states.
Something was happening to the great schemes of my uncle's
affairs; people were beginning to doubt, to question. It was the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: companions, without saying a single word. It was Neb. He was in haste to be
on the other side, and to climb towards the north. It had been impossible
to hold him back. Pencroft called him in vain. The reporter prepared to
follow him, but Pencroft stopped him. "Do you want to cross the channel?"
he asked. "Yes," replied Spilett. "All right!" said the seaman; "wait a bit;
Neb is well able to carry help to his master. If we venture into the
channel, we risk being carried into the open sea by the current, which is
running very strong; but, if I'm not wrong, it is ebbing. See, the tide is
going down over the sand. Let us have patience, and at low water it is
possible we may find a fordable passage." "You are right," replied the
reporter, "we will not separate more than we can help."
The Mysterious Island |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: score or so who brush past you in an opposite direction. It may
annoy you to take your walks and seats in public view. Alas! there
is no help for it among the Alps. There are no recesses, as in
Gorbio Valley by the oil-mill; no sacred solitude of olive gardens on
the Roccabruna-road; no nook upon Saint Martin's Cape, haunted by the
voice of breakers, and fragrant with the threefold sweetness of the
rosemary and the sea-pines and the sea.
For this publicity there is no cure, and no alleviation; but the
storms of which you will complain so bitterly while they endure,
chequer and by their contrast brighten the sameness of the fair-
weather scenes. When sun and storm contend together - when the thick
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