| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moon-Face and Other Stories by Jack London: you read this I shall have passed on. The Minions of Midas are all-powerful.
The police are impotent. I have learned from them that other millionnaires
have been likewise mulcted or persecuted--how many is not known, for when one
yields to the M. of M., his mouth is thenceforth sealed. Those who have not
yielded are even now reaping their scarlet harvest. The grim game is being
played out. The Federal Government can do nothing. I also understand that
similar branch organizations have made their appearance in Europe. Society is
shaken to its foundations. Principalities and powers are as brands ripe for
the burning. Instead of the masses against the classes, it is a class against
the classes. We, the guardians of human progress, are being singled out and
struck down. Law and order have failed.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: on the stairs. There were no marks of powder. The bullet, a
thirty-eight caliber, had been found in the dead man's clothing,
and was shown to the jury.
Mr. Jarvis was called next, but his testimony amounted to little.
He had been summoned by telephone to Sunnyside, had come over at
once with the steward and Mr. Winthrop, at present out of town.
They had been admitted by the housekeeper, and had found the body
lying at the foot of the staircase. He had made a search for a
weapon, but there was none around. The outer entry door in the
east wing had been unfastened and was open about an inch.
I had been growing more and more nervous. When the coroner
The Circular Staircase |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: had a tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant
mounted the stairs of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation
insensibly assumed another aspect. It was impossible to take
Doctor Lombard lightly; and there was a suggestion of fatality in
the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Who could tell amid what
tragic records of domestic tyranny and fluttering broken purposes
the little drama of Miss Lombard's fate was being played out?
Might not the accumulated influences of such a house modify the
lives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of a
suburban villa with sanitary plumbing and a telephone?
One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful
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