| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce: apparatus, halted in the midst of a desert, where there had been no
rain for ten years, and set up a camp. After several months of
preparation and an expenditure of a million dollars all was in
readiness, and a series of tremendous explosions occurred on the
earth and in the sky. This was followed by a great down-pour of
rain, which washed the unfortunate Officer of the Government and
the outfit off the face of creation and affected the agricultural
heart with joy too deep for utterance. A Newspaper Reporter who
had just arrived escaped by climbing a hill near by, and there he
found the Sole Survivor of the expedition - a mule-driver - down on
his knees behind a mesquite bush, praying with extreme fervour.
Fantastic Fables |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sophist by Plato: THEAETETUS: I must, if I am to keep pace with the argument.
STRANGER: Let us consider once more whether there may not be yet another
aspect of sophistry.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: In the acquisitive there was a subdivision of the combative or
fighting art.
THEAETETUS: There was.
STRANGER: Perhaps we had better divide it.
THEAETETUS: What shall be the divisions?
STRANGER: There shall be one division of the competitive, and another of
the pugnacious.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: discernibly at any rate differed from mine. He had showed me
Gwendolen's photograph with the remark that she wasn't pretty but
was awfully interesting; she had published at the age of nineteen a
novel in three volumes, "Deep Down," about which, in THE MIDDLE, he
had been really splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and
undertook that the periodical in question should do no less; then
at the last, with his hand on the door, he said to me: "Of course
you'll be all right, you know." Seeing I was a trifle vague he
added: "I mean you won't be silly."
"Silly - about Vereker! Why what do I ever find him but awfully
clever?"
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