| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: chit-chatty indeed. So much so, that T. A. Buck, glancing up
from the cards which had preceded them, had difficulty in
repressing a frown of annoyance. T. A. Buck, during his
college-days, and for a lamentably long time after, had been
known as "Beau" Buck, because of his faultless clothes and his
charming manner. His eyes had something to do with it, too, no
doubt. He had lived down the title by sheer force of business
ability. No one thought of using the nickname now, though the
clothes, the manner, and the eyes were the same. At the entrance
of the three women, he had been engrossed in the difficult task
of selling a fall line to Mannie Nussbaum, of Portland, Oregon.
Emma McChesney & Co. |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Damaged Goods by Upton Sinclair: call themselves representatives of the people. They are not able
to find a single hour to discuss these three cruel gods, to which
egotism and indifference make every day such frightful human
sacrifices. They have not sufficient leisure to combat this
ferocious trinity, which destroys every day thousands of lives.
Alcoholism! It would be necessary to forbid the manufacture of
poisons, and to restrict the number of licenses; but as one has
fear of the great distillers, who are rich and powerful, and of
the little dealers, who are the masters of universal suffrage,
one puts one's conscience to sleep by lamenting the immorality of
the working-class, and publishing little pamphlets and sermons.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: punctual payments. Probably he has never ventured even to
reinvest his little legacy. He is acutely aware of possessing an
exceptionally fine intelligence, but he is entirely unconscious
of a fundamental unreality. Nothing has ever occurred to him to
make him ask why the mass of men were either not possessed of his
security or discontented with it. The impulses that took his
school friends out upon all sorts of odd feats and adventures
struck him as needless. As he grew up he turned with an equal
distrust from passion or ambition. His friends went out after
love, after adventure, after power, after knowledge, after this
or that desire, and became men. But he noted merely that they
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