| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: surface of the globe. The oak and the palm were growing side by side,
the Australian eucalyptus leaned against the Norwegian pine, the
birch-tree of the north mingled its foliage with New Zealand kauris.
It was enough to distract the most ingenious classifier of
terrestrial botany.
Suddenly I halted. I drew back my uncle.
The diffused light revealed the smallest object in the dense and
distant thickets. I had thought I saw - no! I did see, with my own
eyes, vast colossal forms moving amongst the trees. They were
gigantic animals; it was a herd of mastodons - not fossil remains,
but living and resembling those the bones of which were found in the
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: Vinet submitted to his fate; but his gall increased. He became a
Liberal in the belief that his fortune might yet be made by the
triumph of the opposition, and he lived in a miserable little house in
the Upper town from which his wife seldom issued. Madame Vinet had
found no one to defend her since her marriage except an old Madame de
Chargeboeuf, a widow with one daughter, who lived at Troyes. The
unfortunate young woman, destined for better things, was absolutely
alone in her home with a single child.
There are some kinds of poverty which may be nobly accepted and gaily
borne; but Vinet, devoured by ambition, and feeling himself guilty
towards his wife, was full of darkling rage; his conscience grew
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: this with the phenomena observed at the Great Eyrie, the flames which
rose above the crest, the noises which had so frightened the people
of Pleasant Garden and Morganton. But of what mechanisms were these
the fragments, and what reason had our captain for destroying them?
At this moment I felt a breath of air; a breeze came from the east.
The sky swiftly cleared. The hollow was filled with light from the
rays of the sun which appeared midway between the horizon and the
zenith.
A cry escaped me! The crest of the rocky wall rose a hundred feet
above me. And on the eastern side was revealed that easily
recognizable pinnacle, the rock like a mounting eagle. It was the
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