| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: to state that now that I know that you are Mr. Worthing's ward, I
cannot help expressing a wish you were - well, just a little older
than you seem to be - and not quite so very alluring in appearance.
In fact, if I may speak candidly -
CECILY. Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything
unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.
GWENDOLEN. Well, to speak with perfect candour, Cecily, I wish
that you were fully forty-two, and more than usually plain for your
age. Ernest has a strong upright nature. He is the very soul of
truth and honour. Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as
deception. But even men of the noblest possible moral character
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett: glad to see the dear old soul again. "I hear her voice at the
gate." But Mrs. Todd was out of the door before me.
There, sure enough, stood Mrs. Blackett, who must have left
Green Island before daylight. She had climbed the steep road from
the waterside so eagerly that she was out of breath, and was
standing by the garden fence to rest. She held an old-fashioned
brown wicker cap-basket in her hand, as if visiting were a thing of
every day, and looked up at us as pleased and triumphant as a
child.
"Oh, what a poor, plain garden! Hardly a flower in it except
your bush o' balm!" she said. "But you do keep your garden neat,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: vegetation, is stained in broad bands of many bright colours.
At this season, the land moistened by constant showers,
produces a singularly bright green pasture, which lower and
lower down, gradually fades away and at last disappears. In
latitude 16 degs., and at the trifling elevation of 1500 feet,
it is surprising to behold a vegetation possessing a character
decidedly British. The hills are crowned with irregular
plantations of Scotch firs; and the sloping banks are thickly
scattered over with thickets of gorse, covered with its bright
yellow flowers. Weeping-willows are common on the banks
of the rivulets, and the hedges are made of the blackberry,
The Voyage of the Beagle |
