| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: of extraordinary width stretched away up the hill for a distance
of a mile and a half or so, and appeared to terminate at an open
space surrounding the gleaming building that crowned the hill.
But right in front of us was the wonder and glory of Milosis
-- the great staircase of the palace, the magnificence of which
took our breath away. Let the reader imagine, if he can, a splendid
stairway, sixty-five feet from balustrade to balustrade, consisting
of two vast flights, each of one hundred and twenty-five steps
of eight inches in height by three feet broad, connected by a
flat resting-place sixty feet in length, and running from the
palace wall on the edge of the precipice down to meet a waterway
Allan Quatermain |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: happened to be the only letter the early post had brought, and he
glanced across the table at his wife, who had come down before him
and had probably laid the envelope on his plate. She was not the
woman to ask awkward questions, but he felt the conjecture of her
glance, and he was debating whether to affect surprise at the
receipt of the letter, or to pass it off as a business
communication that had strayed to his house, when a check fell
from the envelope. It was the royalty on the first edition of the
letters. His first feeling was one of simple satisfaction. The
money had come with such infernal opportuneness that he could not
help welcoming it. Before long, too, there would be more; he knew
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde: the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and
they did not like it. They used to wander round the high wall when
their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden
inside. "How happy we were there," they said to each other.
Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were little
blossoms and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant
it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there
were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Once a
beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw
the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped
back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people
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