| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain: and he WOULDN'T bear it another hour! And then he raged
right along with his awful tale, everybody a-staring
and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and Benny
and Aunt Sally crying their hearts out. And by George,
Tom Sawyer never looked at him once! Never once--just
set there gazing with all his eyes at something else,
I couldn't tell what. And so the old man raged right along,
pouring his words out like a stream of fire:
"I killed him! I am guilty! But I never had the notion
in my life to hurt him or harm him, spite of all them lies
about my threatening him, till the very minute I raised
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: stood staring, before the fire, at the "Death of Sir Acton Hague,
K.C.B.," the man who ten years earlier had been the nearest of his
friends and whose deposition from this eminence had practically
left it without an occupant. He had seen him after their rupture,
but hadn't now seen him for years. Standing there before the fire
he turned cold as he read what had befallen him. Promoted a short
time previous to the governorship of the Westward Islands, Acton
Hague had died, in the bleak honour of this exile, of an illness
consequent on the bite of a poisonous snake. His career was
compressed by the newspaper into a dozen lines, the perusal of
which excited on George Stransom's part no warmer feeling than one
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about
when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had
something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an
oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface
of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank
somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument
(the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of
shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail
figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls
which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face
1984 |
