| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Queen Anne's days to the Revolution. The occasion was rendered
more interesting by the presence of a venerable personage, whose
own actual reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and Howe,
and even supplied him with a doubtful anecdote or two of
Hutchinson. He was one of that small, and now all but
extinguished, class, whose attachment to royalty, and to the
colonial institutions and customs that were connected with it,
had never yielded to the democratic heresies of after times. The
young queen of Britain has not a more loyal subject in her
realm--perhaps not one who would kneel before her throne with
such reverential love--as this old grandsire, whose head has
Twice Told Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: the men began to importune me to go; and when I refused, began to
grumble, and say they were not under my command, and they would go.
"Come, Jack," says one of the men, "will you go with me? I'll go
for one." Jack said he would - and then another - and, in a word,
they all left me but one, whom I persuaded to stay, and a boy left
in the boat. So the supercargo and I, with the third man, went
back to the boat, where we told them we would stay for them, and
take care to take in as many of them as should be left; for I told
them it was a mad thing they were going about, and supposed most of
them would have the fate of Tom Jeffry.
They told me, like seamen, they would warrant it they would come
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: isn't yours after all.
JACK. Of course it's mine. [Moving to him.] You have seen me
with it a hundred times, and you have no right whatsoever to read
what is written inside. It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a
private cigarette case.
ALGERNON. Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what
one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern
culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
JACK. I am quite aware of the fact, and I don't propose to discuss
modern culture. It isn't the sort of thing one should talk of in
private. I simply want my cigarette case back.
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