| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: to put the pair in competition; John's case was out of all
parallel. But the cabman, too, is worth the sympathy of the
judicious; for he was a fellow of genuine kindliness and a
high sense of personal dignity incensed by drink; and his
advances had been cruelly and publicly rebuffed. As he
drove, therefore, he counted his wrongs, and thirsted for
sympathy and drink. Now, it chanced he had a friend, a
publican in Queensferry Street, from whom, in view of the
sacredness of the occasion, he thought he might extract a
dram. Queensferry Street lies something off the direct road
to Murrayfield. But then there is the hilly cross-road that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: several questions to him about Gnekker, on whose account I have
come here. The attendant turns out to be a native of Harkov; he
knows the town like the fingers of his hand, but does not
remember any household of the surname of Gnekker. I question him
about the estate -- the same answer.
The clock in the corridor strikes one, then two, then three. . .
. These last months in which I am waiting for death seem much
longer than the whole of my life. And I have never before been so
ready to resign myself to the slowness of time as now. In the old
days, when one sat in the station and waited for a train, or
presided in an examination-room, a quarter of an hour would seem
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: great populations, great masses of people found themselves
without work, without money, and unable to get food. Famine was
in every working-class quarter in the world within three weeks of
the beginning of the war. Within a month there was not a city
anywhere in which the ordinary law and social procedure had not
been replaced by some form of emergency control, in which
firearms and military executions were not being used to keep
order and prevent violence. And still in the poorer quarters,
and in the populous districts, and even here and there already
among those who had been wealthy, famine spread.
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