| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voice of the City by O. Henry: accomplished. If he found, with the good poet with
the game foot and artificially curled hair, that he who
ascends to mountain tops will find the loftiest peaks
most wrapped in clouds and snow, he concealed his
chilblains beneath a brave and smiling exterior. He
was a lucky man and knew it, even though he were
imitating the Spartan boy with an ice-cream freezer
beneath his doublet frappeeing the region of his
heart.
After a brief wedding tour abroad, the couple re-
turned to create a decided ripple in the calm cistern
The Voice of the City |
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: selfish soul; and--gracious God! have been spared the misery of
discovering, when too late, that I was united to a heartless,
unprincipled wretch. All my schemes of usefulness would not then
have been blasted. The tenderness of my heart would not have heated
my imagination with visions of the ineffable delight of happy love;
nor would the sweet duty of a mother have been so cruelly interrupted.
But I must not suffer the fortitude I have so hardly acquired,
to be undermined by unavailing regret. Let me hasten forward to
describe the turbid stream in which I had to wade--but let me
exultingly declare that it is passed--my soul holds fellowship with
him no more. He cut the Gordian knot, which my principles, mistaken
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: a mass of plaster went sliding down outside and fell with a
loud impact. I gripped his arm, fearing he might cry out,
and for a long time we crouched motionless. Then I turned
to see how much of our rampart remained. The detachment
of the plaster had left a vertical slit open in the debris, and
by raising myself cautiously across a beam I was able to see
out of this gap into what had been overnight a quiet suburban
roadway. Vast, indeed, was the change that we beheld.
The fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst
of the house we had first visited. The building had vanished,
completely smashed, pulverised, and dispersed by the blow.
War of the Worlds |
