| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: They take exceedingly good care of their rivers in Switzerland
and other portions of Europe. They wall up both banks
with slanting solid stone masonry--so that from end
to end of these rivers the banks look like the wharves
at St. Louis and other towns on the Mississippi River.
It was during this walk from St. Nicholas, in the shadow
of the majestic Alps, that we came across some little
children amusing themselves in what seemed, at first,
a most odd and original way--but it wasn't; it was in
simply a natural and characteristic way. They were roped
together with a string, they had mimic alpenstocks and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: woman saying:
"Righd oop der stairs, at der back of der halle. Der room
mit der door oppen."
Miss Baker met the doctor at the landing, she told him in a
whisper of the trouble.
"Her husband's deserted her, I'm afraid, doctor, and took
all of her money--a good deal of it. It's about killed the
poor child. She was out of her head a good deal of the
night, and now she's got a raging fever."
The doctor and Miss Baker returned to the room and entered,
closing the door. The big doctor stood for a moment looking
McTeague |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Euthyphro by Plato: time he is amusingly confident that he has weapons in his own armoury which
would be more than a match for him. He is quite sincere in his prosecution
of his father, who has accidentally been guilty of homicide, and is not
wholly free from blame. To purge away the crime appears to him in the
light of a duty, whoever may be the criminal.
Thus begins the contrast between the religion of the letter, or of the
narrow and unenlightened conscience, and the higher notion of religion
which Socrates vainly endeavours to elicit from him. 'Piety is doing as I
do' is the idea of religion which first occurs to him, and to many others
who do not say what they think with equal frankness. For men are not
easily persuaded that any other religion is better than their own; or that
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