| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: MABEL CHILTERN. Do you mean to say you didn't come here expressly to
propose to me?
LORD GORING. [Triumphantly.] No; that was a flash of genius.
MABEL CHILTERN. Your first.
LORD GORING. [With determination.] My last.
MABEL CHILTERN. I am delighted to hear it. Now don't stir. I'll be
back in five minutes. And don't fall into any temptations while I am
away.
LORD GORING. Dear Mabel, while you are away, there are none. It
makes me horribly dependent on you.
[Enter LADY CHILTERN.]
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: Hearing their conversations, and their accounts of the approbation their
papers were received with, I was excited to try my hand among them;
but, being still a boy, and suspecting that my brother would object
to printing anything of mine in his paper if he knew it to be mine,
I contrived to disguise my hand, and, writing an anonymous paper,
I put it in at night under the door of the printing-house. It was found
in the morning, and communicated to his writing friends when they
call'd in as usual. They read it, commented on it in my hearing, and I
had the exquisite pleasure of finding it met with their approbation,
and that, in their different guesses at the author, none were named
but men of some character among us for learning and ingenuity.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: the smile on his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath.
"Mason!--the West Indies!" he said, in the tone one might fancy a
speaking automaton to enounce its single words; "Mason!--the West
Indies!" he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times,
growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly
seemed to know what he was doing.
"Do you feel ill, sir?" I inquired.
"Jane, I've got a blow; I've got a blow, Jane!" He staggered.
"Oh, lean on me, sir."
"Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it
now."
Jane Eyre |
