| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: sterling gentility, or, at least, a tacit recognition of it.
On the other hand, nothing tortured her more intolerably than when
this recognition was too prominently expressed. To one or two rather
officious offers of sympathy, her responses were little short of
acrimonious; and, we regret to say, Hepzibah was thrown into a
positively unchristian state of mind by the suspicion that one of
her customers was drawn to the shop, not by any real need of
the article which she pretended to seek, but by a wicked wish to
stare at her. The vulgar creature was determined to see for
herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy,
after wasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life
House of Seven Gables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: detection of radio-activity to its first subjugation to human
purpose measured little more than a quarter of a century. For
twenty years after that, indeed, minor difficulties prevented any
striking practical application of his success, but the essential
thing was done, this new boundary in the march of human progress
was crossed, in that year. He set up atomic disintegration in a
minute particle of bismuth; it exploded with great violence into
a heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrated in its
turn in the course of seven days, and it was only after another
year's work that he was able to show practically that the last
result of this rapid release of energy was gold. But the thing
The Last War: A World Set Free |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: She spake and King Leodogran rejoiced,
But musing, `Shall I answer yea or nay?'
Doubted, and drowsed, nodded and slept, and saw,
Dreaming, a slope of land that ever grew,
Field after field, up to a height, the peak
Haze-hidden, and thereon a phantom king,
Now looming, and now lost; and on the slope
The sword rose, the hind fell, the herd was driven,
Fire glimpsed; and all the land from roof and rick,
In drifts of smoke before a rolling wind,
Streamed to the peak, and mingled with the haze
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