| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: but never had she sacrificed to politeness with a more suffering spirit.
A few minutes, though as few as possible, were inevitably consumed;
and when her own mistress again, when able to turn and look
as she had done before, she found herself accosted by Captain Wentworth,
in a reserved yet hurried sort of farewell. "He must wish her good night;
he was going; he should get home as fast as he could."
"Is not this song worth staying for?" said Anne, suddenly struck
by an idea which made her yet more anxious to be encouraging.
"No!" he replied impressively, "there is nothing worth my staying for;"
and he was gone directly.
Jealousy of Mr Elliot! It was the only intelligible motive.
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: wield a pen with the vigour of a Caesar, threaten his greatest
viceroys, dismiss his leading conservative officials, introduce
the most sweeping and far-reaching reforms that have ever been
thought of by the Chinese people, and then run from a woman as
though the very devil was after him.
He has been variously rated as a genius, an imbecile and a fool.
Let us grant that he was not brilliant. Let us rate him as an
imbecile, and then let us try to account for his having brought
into the palace every ingenious toy and every wonderful and
useful invention and discovery of the past twenty or thirty years
with the exception of the X-rays and liquid air. Let us try to
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: guerdon -- then it was that the audience rose in its
seat as a single man -- or presumably so -- and in-
dorsed the specialty that made Miss Ray's name a
favorite in the booking-offices.
At the end of the two years Miss Ray suddenly an-
nounced to her dear friend, Miss D'Armande, that
she was going to spend the summer at an antediluvian
village on the north shore of Long Island, and that
the stage would see her no more.
Seventeen minutes after Miss Lynnette D'Armande
had expressed her wish to know the whereabouts of
The Voice of the City |
