| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous by Oscar Wilde: Official Receiver in Bankruptcy and myself were, however, better
informed. And much pleasure has been derived from reading those
criticisms, all carefully preserved along with the list of receipts
which were simultaneously pouring in from the German performances.
To do the critics justice they never withdrew any of their printed
opinions, which were all trotted out again when the play was
produced privately for the second time in England by the Literary
Theatre Society in 1906. In the Speaker of July 14th, 1906,
however, some of the iterated misrepresentations of fact were
corrected. No attempt was made to controvert the opinion of an
ignorant critic: his veracity only was impugned. The powers of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: wistfully towards a point whither people seemed to be hastening.
"Surely some prodigious merry-making is going on," exclaimed he
"I have laughed very little since I left home, sir, and should be
sorry to lose an opportunity. Shall we step round the corner by
that darkish house and take our share of the fun?"
"Sit down again, sit down, good Robin," replied the gentleman,
laying his hand on the skirt of the gray coat. "You forget that
we must wait here for your kinsman; and there is reason to
believe that he will pass by, in the course of a very few
moments."
The near approach of the uproar had now disturbed the
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: the scientific civilisation, reeled and fell upon the millions it
had held together in economic relationship, as these people,
perplexed and helpless, faced this marvel of credit utterly
destroyed, the airships of Asia, countless and relentless, poured
across the heavens, swooped eastward to America and westward to
Europe. The page of history becomes a long crescendo of battle.
The main body of the British-Indian air-fleet perished upon a
pyre of blazing antagonists in Burmah; the Germans were scattered
in the great battle of the Carpathians; the vast peninsula of
India burst into insurrection and civil war from end to end, and
from Gobi to Morocco rose the standards of the "Jehad." For some
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