| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: doubtless eagerly and bitterly canvassed. It was felt that a few
years ago the honours would have gone elsewhere. In this unwonted
business, in this reception of some hitherto undreamed-of and
outlandish potentate - some Prester John or old Assaracus - a few
years back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero
and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned
the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society.
And now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his
house quite unobserved; and his young men could but look in at the
door while their rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Grevy felt a touch of
bitterness towards his successor when he beheld him figure on the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: another Saturday. She felt herself yielding, as she always did,
to the warm influence of his concern for her, the feminine in her
leaning on the man in him with a conscious intensity of
abandonment. He put her in the hansom, and her hand stole into
his in the darkness. A tear or two rose, and she let them fall.
It was so delicious to cry over imaginary troubles!
That evening, after dinner, he surprised her by reverting to the
subject of his talk. He combined a man's dislike of
uncomfortable questions with an almost feminine skill in eluding
them; and she knew that if he returned to the subject he must
have some special reason for doing so.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the throat of
one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at once
sucked swiftly out of sight.
`After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall
towers standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them
there was often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a
hot day above a sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I
reached a strong suggestion of an extensive system of
subterranean ventilation, whose true import it was difficult to
imagine. I was at first inclined to associate it with the
sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an obvious
The Time Machine |
