| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: dozen years of hard reading lending a quietness to their gaze
which suited them well.
A lady would have said there was a smell of tobacco in the room: a
man that there was not.
Knight did not rise. He looked at a timepiece on the mantelshelf,
then turned again to his letters, pointing to a chair.
'Well, I am glad you have come. I only returned to town
yesterday; now, don't speak, Stephen, for ten minutes; I have just
that time to the late post. At the eleventh minute, I'm your man.'
Stephen sat down as if this kind of reception was by no means new,
and away went Knight's pen, beating up and down like a ship in a
 A Pair of Blue Eyes |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: ladies."
Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when
he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from
the main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did
he wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn's protest had
been merely formal: like most of the wealthy, he had only the
dimmest notion of what money represented to the poor. But it
was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and
especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed
Vanderlyn's attention.
"A windfall?" he gaily repeated.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: no change in commanding officers, in routine or in
discipline, until after we have docked again in New York."
As I ceased speaking and stepped back from the rail there
was a roar of applause from the deck such as I never before
had heard aboard a ship of peace. It recalled to my mind
tales that I had read of the good old days when naval
vessels were built to fight, when ships of peace had been
man-of-war, and guns had flashed in other than futile target
practice, and decks had run red with blood.
With the subsistence of the sea, we were able to go to work
upon the damaged engines to some effect, and I also set men
 Lost Continent |