| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: surgical instrument which one of them must have dropped.
It looked not unlike a button-hook, but was much smaller,
and its point was sharpened. A hundred times in my boyhood
days had I picked locks with a buttonhook. Could I but
reach that little bit of polished steel I might yet effect
at least a temporary escape.
Crawling to the limit of my chain, I found that by
reaching one hand as far out as I could my fingers
still fell an inch short of the coveted instrument.
It was tantalizing! Stretch every fiber of my being
as I would, I could not quite make it.
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: Wellingtons and a little bald head, and when, in bed at night, he
grew tired of telling himself stories of sea-fights, he used to
dress himself up as the old gentleman, and entertain other little
boys and girls with cake and wine.
In the year 1840 the thirty-seven were all alive; in 1850 their
number had decreased by six; in 1856 and 1857 business was more
lively, for the Crimea and the Mutiny carried off no less than
nine. There remained in 1870 but five of the original members,
and at the date of my story, including the two Finsburys, but
three.
By this time Masterman was in his seventy-third year; he had long
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Master Key by L. Frank Baum: me, can you trust your chief of police?"
"I think so," said the President, slowly; "yet since your invention
has shown me that many men I have considered honest are criminally
implicated in this royalist plot, I hardly know whom to depend upon."
"Then please wear these spectacles during your interview with the
minister of police," said the boy. "You must say nothing, while he
is with us, about certain marks that will appear upon his forehead;
but when he has gone I will explain those marks so you will
understand them."
The President covered his eyes with the spectacles.
"Why," he exclaimed, "I see upon your own brow the letters--"
The Master Key |
