| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain
laxity of deportment. And yet was he to accuse Miss Daisy Miller
of actual or potential inconduite, as they said at Geneva?
He felt that he had lived at Geneva so long that he had lost
a good deal; he had become dishabituated to the American tone.
Never, indeed, since he had grown old enough to appreciate things,
had he encountered a young American girl of so pronounced a type as this.
Certainly she was very charming, but how deucedly sociable!
Was she simply a pretty girl from New York State? Were they all
like that, the pretty girls who had a good deal of gentlemen's society?
Or was she also a designing, an audacious, an unscrupulous young person?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the corner of the turn. About me lay scattered stones
crumbled from the cliff above. They were of various
sizes and shapes, but enough were of handy dimensions
for use as ammunition in lieu of my precious arrows.
Gathering a number of stones into a little pile beside
the mouth of the cave I waited the advance of the Sagoths.
As I stood there, tense and silent, listening for the
first faint sound that should announce the approach
of my enemies, a slight noise from within the cave's
black depths attracted my attention. It might have
been produced by the moving of the great body of some
At the Earth's Core |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: youth are said to be taught them by Socrates, when there are not
unfrequently exhibitions of them at the theatre (Probably in allusion to
Aristophanes who caricatured, and to Euripides who borrowed the notions of
Anaxagoras, as well as to other dramatic poets.) (price of admission one
drachma at the most); and they might pay their money, and laugh at Socrates
if he pretends to father these extraordinary views. And so, Meletus, you
really think that I do not believe in any god?
I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none at all.
Nobody will believe you, Meletus, and I am pretty sure that you do not
believe yourself. I cannot help thinking, men of Athens, that Meletus is
reckless and impudent, and that he has written this indictment in a spirit
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