| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: very night.
Liddy came to my room on Sunday morning with a face as long as
the moral law. She laid out my, things as usual, but I missed
her customary garrulousness. I was not regaled with the new
cook's extravagance as to eggs, and she even forbore to mention
"that Jamieson," on whose arrival she had looked with silent
disfavor.
"What's the matter, Liddy?" I asked at last. "Didn't you sleep
last night?"
"No, ma'm," she said stiffly.
"Did you have two cups of coffee at your dinner?" I inquired.
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: Russians, which led Trotsky to define man as an animal
distinguished by laziness. Russians are certainly lazy, and
probably owe to their climate their remarkable incapacity for
prolonged effort. The Russian climate is such that over
large areas of Russia the Russian peasant is accustomed, and
has been accustomed for hundreds of years, to perform
prodigies of labor during two short periods of sowing
and harvest, and to spend the immensely long and
monotonous winter in a hibernation like that of the snake or
the dormouse. There is a much greater difference between a
Russian workman's normal output and that of which he is
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: on his slippers and dressing-gown, and rang the bell.
The old butler, Stephen, the father of a
family and the grandfather of six grandchildren,
who had served in that house for thirty years,
entered the room hurriedly, with bent legs, carry-
ing in the newly blackened boots which Volgin had
taken off the night before, a well-brushed suit, and
a clean shirt. The guest thanked him, and then
asked what the weather was like (the blinds were
drawn so that the sun should not prevent any one
from sleeping till eleven o'clock if he were so
The Forged Coupon |
