| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: a year before. He was brown and lean and enduring, steady-eyed
and pestilence-salted, and his mouth, which had once hung open,
shut now like a steel trap. Across his brow ran a white scar
that he had got in a fight on the brig. In Cardiff he had felt
the need of new clothes and a weapon, and had, by means that
would have shocked him a year ago, secured a flannel shirt, a
corduroy suit, and a revolver and fifty cartridges from an
abandoned pawnbroker's. He also got some soap and had his first
real wash for thirteen months in a stream outside the town. The
Vigilance bands that had at first shot plunderers very freely
were now either entirely dispersed by the plague, or busy between
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Ivanhoe, and its no less exhausted rider, went down,
as all had expected, before the well-aimed lance and
vigorous steed of the Templar. This issue of the
combat all had foreseen; but although the spear of
Ivanhoe did but, in comparison, touch the shield of
Bois-Guilbert, that champion, to the astonishment
of all who beheld it reeled in his saddle, lost his
stirrups, and fell in the lists.
Ivanhoe, extricating himself from his fallen horse,
was soon on foot, hastening to mend his fortune
with his sword; but his antagonist arose not. Wilfred,
Ivanhoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Daisy Miller by Henry James: she was evidently neither offended nor flattered.
If she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not
particularly to hear him, this was simply her habit, her manner.
Yet, as he talked a little more and pointed out some of the objects
of interest in the view, with which she appeared quite unacquainted,
she gradually gave him more of the benefit of her glance; and then
he saw that this glance was perfectly direct and unshrinking.
It was not, however, what would have been called an immodest glance,
for the young girl's eyes were singularly honest and fresh.
They were wonderfully pretty eyes; and, indeed, Winterbourne had not
seen for a long time anything prettier than his fair countrywoman's
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