| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: recover if the fee to the potent sorcerer, whose servant was the
head in the basin, were doubled.
Here the mistake from the artistic point of view came in. To ask
for twice your stipulated fee in a voice that Lazarus might have
used when he rose from the dead, is absurd. Janoo, who is really a
woman of masculine intellect, saw this as quickly as I did. I heard
her say "Asli nahin! Fareib!" scornfully under her breath; and just
as she said so, the light in the basin died out, the head stopped
talking, and we heard the room door creak on its hinges. Then Janoo
struck a match, lit the lamp, and we saw that head, basin, and seal-
cutter were gone. Suddhoo was wringing his hands and explaining to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: tone which implied that he was discharging a disagreeable duty--
"Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one
addressed to me."
It was a letter of two pages, and she immediately looked at the signature.
"Mr. Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed,
in a tone of pleased surprise. "But," she added, looking at
Mr. Casaubon, "I can imagine what he has written to you about."
"You can, if you please, read the letter," said Mr. Casaubon,
severely pointing to it with his pen, and not looking at her.
"But I may as well say beforehand, that I must decline the proposal it
contains to pay a visit here. I trust I may be excused for desiring
 Middlemarch |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: have such a subordinate by me.
On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army
generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two
quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be
different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great
things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with
them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority,
disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But
among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that
they respected and even feared him.
Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers
 War and Peace |