| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: give a fellow a clue?" I felt much more at my ease.
"My whole lucid effort gives him the clue - every page and line and
letter. The thing's as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait
on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It's stuck into
every volume as your foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs
every line, it chooses every word, it dots every i, it places every
comma."
I scratched my head. "Is it something in the style or something in
the thought? An element of form or an element of feeling?"
He indulgently shook my hand again, and I felt my questions to be
crude and my distinctions pitiful. "Good-night, my dear boy -
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: none is more rationalistic than he, none more free from any belief
in the 'visions and omens, the monstrous legends, the grovelling
superstitions and unmanly craving for the supernatural' ([Greek
text that cannot be reproduced](11)) which he himself is compelled
to notice as the characteristics of some of the historians who
preceded him. Fortunate in the land which bore him, he was no less
blessed in the wondrous time of his birth. For, representing in
himself the spiritual supremacy of the Greek intellect and allied
in bonds of chivalrous friendship to the world-conqueror of his
day, he seems led as it were by the hand of Fate 'to comprehend,'
as has been said, 'more clearly than the Romans themselves the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as
he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. - He
gave a deep sigh. - I saw the iron enter into his soul! - I burst
into tears. - I could not sustain the picture of confinement which
my fancy had drawn. - I started up from my chair, and calling La
Fleur: I bid him bespeak me a remise, and have it ready at the door
of the hotel by nine in the morning.
I'll go directly, said I, myself to Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul.
La Fleur would have put me to bed; but - not willing he should see
anything upon my cheek which would cost the honest fellow a heart-
ache, - I told him I would go to bed by myself, - and bid him go do
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