| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Cruise of the Jasper B. by Don Marquis: Wilton Barnstable was the inventor of a new school of detection
of crime. The system came in with him, and it may go out with
him for lack of a man of his genius to perpetuate it. He
insisted that there was nothing spectacular or romantic in the
pursuit of the criminal, or, at least, that there should be
nothing of the sort. And he was especially disgusted when anyone
referred to him as "a second Sherlock Holmes."
"I am only a plain business man," he would insist, urbanely, with
a wave of his hand. "I have merely brought order, method,
system, business principles, logic, to the detection of crime. I
know nothing of romance. Romance is usually all nonsense in my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: countryman one, in a strange land, where the human voice conveys
no information to the eager ear.
"Did you ever see the unfortunate being to whom these books
belong?" asked Maria, when Jemima brought her slipper. "Yes. He
sometimes walks out, between five and six, before the family is
stirring, in the morning, with two keepers; but even then his hands
are confined."
"What! is he so unruly?" enquired Maria,
with an accent of disappointment.
"No, not that I perceive," replied Jemima; "but he has an
untamed look, a vehemence of eye, that excites apprehension. Were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: an appalling inability to recognize it or love it when it arrives that
it is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote
twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings. Do
not for a moment suppose that uncultivated people are merely
indifferent to high and noble qualities. They hate them malignantly.
At best, such qualities are like rare and beautiful birds: when they
appear the whole country takes down its guns; but the birds receive
the statuary tribute of having their corpses stuffed.
And it really all comes from the habit of preventing children from
being troublesome. You are so careful of your boy's morals, knowing
how troublesome they may be, that you keep him away from the Venus of
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