| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: to possess a full-sized statue, a man must have a studio, a
gallery, or at least the freedom of a back garden. He cannot
carry it about with him, like a satchel, in the bottom of a cab,
nor can he cohabit in a garret, ten by fifteen, with so
momentous a companion. It was my first idea to leave her
behind at my departure. There, in her birthplace, she might
lend an inspiration, methought, to my successor. But the
proprietor, with whom I had unhappily quarrelled, seized the
occasion to be disagreeable, and called upon me to remove my
property. For a man in such straits as I now found myself, the
hire of a lorry was a consideration; and yet even that I could
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: the general company was excluded. She found an old man, who, at
her approach, rose up and bowed profoundly. His appearance
indicated a broken constitution, and his dress, though sedulously
rendered conforming to the etiquette of a ballroom, was worn and
tarnished, and hung in folds about his emaciated person. Lady
Bothwell was about to feel for her purse, expecting to get rid of
the supplicant at the expense of a little money, but some fear of
a mistake arrested her purpose. She therefore gave the man
leisure to explain himself.
"'I have the honour to speak with the Lady Bothwell?'
"'I am Lady Bothwell; allow me to say that this is no time or
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: he found himself wondering if he oughtn't to have begun, so to
speak, further back.
He found himself wondering indeed at many things, and this last
speculation had others to keep it company. What could he have
done, after all, in her lifetime, without giving them both, as it
were, away? He couldn't have made known she was watching him, for
that would have published the superstition of the Beast. This was
what closed his mouth now--now that the Jungle had been thrashed to
vacancy and that the Beast had stolen away. It sounded too foolish
and too flat; the difference for him in this particular, the
extinction in his life of the element of suspense, was such as in
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