| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: was the disappearance of the iron implement that had been used.
I remembered a story I read once about an impish dwarf that lived
in the spaces between the double walls of an ancient castle. I
wondered vaguely if my original idea of a secret entrance to a
hidden chamber could be right, after all, and if we were housing
some erratic guest, who played pranks on us in the dark, and
destroyed the walls that he might listen, hidden safely away, to
our amazed investigations.
Mary Anne and Eliza left that afternoon, but Rosie decided
to stay. It was about five o'clock when the hack came from the
station to get them, and, to my amazement, it had an occupant.
 The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Historical Mystery by Honore de Balzac: to serve twelve years in the cavalry, and I was on the Rhine under
General Steingel, after that in Italy, and then I followed the First
Consul to Egypt. I'll be a corporal soon."
"When I get to Michu's house go to the stable; if you have served
twelve years in the cavalry you know when a horse is blown. Let me
know the condition of Michu's beast."
"See! that's where our corporal was thrown," said the man, pointing to
a spot where the road they were following entered the /rond-point/.
"Tell the captain to come and pick me up at Michu's, and I'll go with
him to Troyes."
So saying Corentin got down, and stood about for a few minutes
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: year; insomuch, as I remember upon each return to my own country
their old dialect was so altered, that I could hardly understand
the new. And I observe, when any YAHOO comes from London out of
curiosity to visit me at my house, we neither of us are able to
deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.
If the censure of the YAHOOS could any way affect me, I should
have great reason to complain, that some of them are so bold as
to think my book of travels a mere fiction out of mine own brain,
and have gone so far as to drop hints, that the HOUYHNHNMS and
YAHOOS have no more existence than the inhabitants of Utopia.
Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of LILLIPUT,
 Gulliver's Travels |