| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: entertaining. There's nothing in the world I love to talk of so much
as London, and the fashions, though I was never there myself.
HASTINGS. Never there! You amaze me! From your air and manner, I
concluded you had been bred all your life either at Ranelagh, St.
James's, or Tower Wharf.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. O! sir, you're only pleased to say so. We country
persons can have no manner at all. I'm in love with the town, and that
serves to raise me above some of our neighbouring rustics; but who can
have a manner, that has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens,
the Borough, and such places where the nobility chiefly resort? All I
can do is to enjoy London at second-hand. I take care to know every
She Stoops to Conquer |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: "They'll take the will for the deed," she whispered back.
"Father Forbes will be here in a minute. Do you know is it
too late?"
Even as she spoke, the outer doorway was darkened by the
commanding bulk of a newcomer's figure. The flash of a silk hat,
and the deferential way in which the assembled neighbors
fell back to clear a passage, made his identity clear.
Theron felt his blood tingle in an unaccustomed way as this
priest of a strange church advanced across the room--
a broad-shouldered, portly man of more than middle height,
with a shapely, strong-lined face of almost waxen pallor,
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off
it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make
you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have
learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn
German is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip
on one villainy of it at a time, leaving that one half learned.
When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can
balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it,
then comes your next task--how to mount it. You do it in this
way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the
other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your
What is Man? |
