| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: patent readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had
been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal
proportions, but singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running
downward at a slight angle from the end at which I entered. At
intervals white globes hung from the ceiling--many of them
cracked and smashed--which suggested that originally the place
had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my element, for
rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big machines,
all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still fairly
complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I
was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most
The Time Machine |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: me from my studies; and yet, what was that passion but a study of
another kind? I used to watch the manners and customs of the Faubourg,
its inhabitants, and their characteristics. As I dressed no better
than a working man, and cared nothing for appearances, I did not put
them on their guard; I could join a group and look on while they drove
bargains or wrangled among themselves on their way home from work.
Even then observation had come to be an instinct with me; a faculty of
penetrating to the soul without neglecting the body; or rather, a
power of grasping external details so thoroughly that they never
detained me for a moment, and at once I passed beyond and through
them. I could enter into the life of the human creatures whom I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: As you continue to look at these pictures, about an inch
square for the most part, sometimes printed three or more to
the page, and each having a printed legend of its own,
however trivial the event recorded, you will soon become
aware of two things: first, that the man can draw, and,
second, that he possesses the gift of an imagination.
'Obstinate reviles,' says the legend; and you should see
Obstinate reviling. 'He warily retraces his steps'; and
there is Christian, posting through the plain, terror and
speed in every muscle. 'Mercy yearns to go' shows you a
plain interior with packing going forward, and, right in the
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