| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: she rose and went into the bedroom and opened her trunk,
taking the key from under a corner of the carpet where she
kept it hid.
At the very bottom of her trunk, under her bridal dress, she
kept her savings. It was all in change--half dollars and
dollars for the most part, with here and there a gold piece.
Long since the little brass match-box had overflowed. Trina
kept the surplus in a chamois-skin sack she had made from an
old chest protector. Just now, yielding to an impulse which
often seized her, she drew out the match-box and the chamois
sack, and emptying the contents on the bed, counted them
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: certain height and distance to be completely apprehended. A
thoroughly contemporary historian such as Lord Clarendon or
Thucydides is in reality part of the history he criticises; and, in
the case of such contemporary historians as Fabius and Philistus,
Polybius in compelled to acknowledge that they are misled by
patriotic and other considerations. Against Polybius himself no
such accusation can be made. He indeed of all men is able, as from
some lofty tower, to discern the whole tendency of the ancient
world, the triumph of Roman institutions and of Greek thought which
is the last message of the old world and, in a more spiritual
sense, has become the Gospel of the new.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 160
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You ARE a proper fool, I said.
The Waste Land |
