| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: The South had always lived by selling cotton and buying the things
it did not produce, but now it could neither sell nor buy. Gerald
O'Hara had three years' crops of cotton stored under the shed near
the gin house at Tara, but little good it did him. In Liverpool it
would bring one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but there was
no hope of getting it to Liverpool. Gerald had changed from a
wealthy man to a man who was wondering how he would feed his family
and his negroes through the winter.
Throughout the South, most of the cotton planters were in the same
fix. With the blockade closing tighter and tighter, there was no
way to get the South's money crop to its market in England, no way
Gone With the Wind |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: Ivanovitch, within you there is a source of strength denied to many
another man. I refer to the strength of an iron perseverance. Cannot
THAT help you to overcome? Most men are weak and lack will-power,
whereas I believe that you possess the power to act a hero's part."
Sinking deep into Chichikov's heart, these words would seem to have
aroused in it a faint stirring of ambition, so much so that, if it was
not fortitude which shone in his eyes, at all events it was something
virile, and of much the same nature.
"Athanasi Vassilievitch," he said firmly, "if you will but petition
for my release, as well as for permission for me to leave here with a
portion of my property, I swear to you on my word of honour that I
Dead Souls |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: Mellish said that there was a Medical "Ring" at Simla, headed by
the Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the
Hospital Assistants in the Empire. I forget exactly how he proved
it, but it had something to do with "skulking up to the Hills;" and
what Mellish wanted was the independent evidence of the Viceroy--
"Steward of our Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, Sir." So Mellish
went up to Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his
trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the
invention.
But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you
chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-
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