| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: under the open sky, where there would be room to
breathe. She went to the front door, and as she did so
Lucius Harney opened it.
He looked graver and less confident than usual,
and for a moment or two neither of them spoke.
Then he held out his hand. "Are you going out?" he
asked. "May I come in?"
Her heart was beating so violently that she was afraid
to speak, and stood looking at him with tear-dilated
eyes; then she became aware of what her silence must
betray, and said quickly: "Yes: come in."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: ranks.
"Stand back! Stand back!" Capt. Pratt was heard to yell. "By God! there's no
wood about that gun."
After this the besiegers withdrew for a breathing spell. At this early stage
of the siege the Indians were seen to board Sullivan's pirogue, and it was
soon discovered they were carrying the cannon balls from the boat to the top
of the bluff. In their simple minds they had conceived a happy thought. They
procured a white-oak log probably a foot in diameter, split it through the
middle and hollowed out the inside with their tomahawks. Then with iron chains
and bars, which they took from Reihart's blacksmith shop, they bound and
securely fastened the sides together. They dragged the improvised cannon
Betty Zane |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: shall spur him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates,
dons the required character, and with moonstruck philosophy
justifies the act in question. I can fancy nothing to compare with
the VIM of these impersonations, the strange scale of language,
flying from Shakespeare to Kant, and from Kant to Major Dyngwell -
"As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument"
the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrelevant
particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence and
bathos, each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous in the
admired disorder of their combination. A talker of a different
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