| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could
invent some way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a
way could be found which would let them romp in the open air
while they learned the kings. I found it, and they mastered
all the monarchs in a day or two.
The idea was to make them SEE the reigns with their eyes;
that would be a large help. We were at the farm then. From the
house-porch the grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fence
and rose on the right to the high ground where my small work-den
stood. A carriage-road wound through the grounds and up the
hill. I staked it out with the English monarchs, beginning with
What is Man? |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: allowed a note of tenderness to creep into her voice.
Marguerite studied the portrait, for it interested her: after
that she turned and looked again at the ponderous desk. It was
covered with a mass of papers, all neatly tied and docketed, which
looked like accounts and receipts arrayed with perfect method. It had
never before struck Marguerite--nor had she, alas! found it worth
while to inquire--as to how Sir Percy, whom all the world had credited
with a total lack of brains, administered the vast fortune which his
father had left him.
Since she had entered this neat, orderly room, she had been
taken so much by surprise, that this obvious proof of her husband's
The Scarlet Pimpernel |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Main Street by Sinclair Lewis: They reached Nels Erdstrom's at four, and with a throb
she recognized the courageous venture which had lured her
to Gopher Prairie: the cleared fields, furrows among stumps,
a log cabin chinked with mud and roofed with dry hay. But
Nels had prospered. He used the log cabin as a barn; and
a new house reared up, a proud, unwise, Gopher Prairie house,
the more naked and ungraceful in its glossy white paint and
pink trimmings. Every tree had been cut down. The house
was so unsheltered, so battered by the wind, so bleakly thrust
out into the harsh clearing, that Carol shivered. But they
were welcomed warmly enough in the kitchen, with its crisp
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