| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini: but more distant from the furnace
than from the wall of the room. In the
space of twenty minutes the eggs were
roasted quite hard, and in forty-seven
minutes the steak was not only dressed,
but almost dry. Another beef-steak,
similarly placed, was rather overdone in
thirty-three minutes. In the evening,
when the heat was still more elevated, a
third beef-steak was laid in the same
place, and as they had noticed that the
 Miracle Mongers and Their Methods |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: period in which thousands of workers[3] have been employed within the
mines no hand was ever stopped for want of work to do. Rather, at any
given moment, the work to be done was more than enough for the hands
employed. And so it is to-day with the owners of slaves working in the
mines; no one dreams of reducing the number of his hands. On the
contrary, the object is perpetually to acquire as many additional
hands as the owner possibly can. The fact is that with few hands to
dig and search, the find of treasure will be small, but with an
increase in labour the discovery of the ore itself is more than
proportionally increased. So much so, that of all operations with
which I am acquainted, this is the only one in which no sort of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: lips pouting in the powdered, sallow face; at the firm modelling of
the cheek, the grains of white in the hairs of the straight sombre
eyebrows; at the long eyes, a narrowed gleam of liquid white and
intense motionless black, with their gaze so empty of thought, and
so absorbed in their fixity that she seemed to be staring at her
own lonely image, in some far-off mirror hidden from my sight
amongst the trees.
And suddenly, without looking at me, with the appearance of a
person speaking to herself, she asked, in that voice slightly harsh
yet mellow and always irritated:
"Why do you keep on coming here?"
 'Twixt Land & Sea |