| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: not more than a hundred feet in depth; but as its walls were smoothly
polished it might as well have been a thousand feet, for I could never
hope to escape without outside assistance.
For a day I was left in darkness; and then, quite suddenly,
a brilliant light illumined my strange cell. I was reasonably
hungry and thirsty by this time, not having tasted food or drink
since the day prior to my incarceration.
To my amazement I found the sides of the pit, that I had
thought smooth, lined with shelves, upon which were the most
The Warlord of Mars |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: she would involuntarily glance up with a little inquiring smile at him,
as if she assumed that, being the master, he must perceive all that was
passing in her brain, as right or wrong. Phillotson was not really thinking
of the arithmetic at all, but of her, in a novel way which somehow seemed
strange to him as preceptor. Perhaps she knew that he was thinking of
her thus.
For a few weeks their work had gone on with a monotony which in
itself was a delight to him. Then it happened that the children
were to be taken to Christminster to see an itinerant exhibition,
in the shape of a model of Jerusalem, to which schools were
admitted at a penny a head in the interests of education.
Jude the Obscure |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: had not attended the lectures on the "Greek bucks." Indeed, profiting
by their privilege of voluntary recitations, they had dropped in but
seldom on Philosophy 4. These blithe grasshoppers had danced and sung
away the precious storing season, and now that the bleak hour of
examinations was upon them, their waked-up hearts had felt aghast at the
sudden vision of their ignorance. It was on a Monday noon that this
feeling came fully upon them, as they read over the names of the
philosophers. Thursday was the day of the examination. "Who's
Anaxagoras?" Billy had inquired of Bertie. "I'll tell you," said
Bertie, "if you'll tell me who Epicharmos of Kos was." And upon this
they embraced with helpless laughter. Then they reckoned up the hours
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