| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: imps, and yelling.
To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubt-
able dragons. He became like the man who lost
his legs at the approach of the red and green
monster. He waited in a sort of a horrified,
listening attitude. He seemed to shut his eyes
and wait to be gobbled.
A man near him who up to this time had been
working feverishly at his rifle suddenly stopped
and ran with howls. A lad whose face had borne
an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of
The Red Badge of Courage |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: been beasts, their instincts fitly adapted to their surroundings,
and happy as living things may be. Now they stumbled in the shackles
of humanity, lived in a fear that never died, fretted by a law they
could not understand; their mock-human existence, begun in an agony,
was one long internal struggle, one long dread of Moreau--and for what?
It was the wantonness of it that stirred me.
Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathised at
least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that.
I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate.
But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity,
his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: thirst of my pupils for improvement does not console me for the
slowness of their progress. Besides, I must reserve space to
gratify my own vanity and do justice to the six artists who acted
my play, by placing on record the hitherto unchronicled success
of the first representation. It is not often that an author,
after a couple of hours of those rare alternations of excitement
and intensely attentive silence which only occur in the theatre
when actors and audience are reacting on one another to the
utmost, is able to step on the stage and apply the strong word
genius to the representation with the certainty of eliciting an
instant and overwhelming assent from the audience. That was my
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