| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: "Gout and decrepitude!" said Sir Walter. "Poor old gentleman."
"Have they any acquaintance here?" asked Elizabeth.
"I do not know; but I can hardly suppose that, at Admiral Croft's
time of life, and in his profession, he should not have many acquaintance
in such a place as this."
"I suspect," said Sir Walter coolly, "that Admiral Croft
will be best known in Bath as the renter of Kellynch Hall.
Elizabeth, may we venture to present him and his wife in Laura Place?"
"Oh, no! I think not. Situated as we are with Lady Dalrymple, cousins,
we ought to be very careful not to embarrass her with acquaintance
she might not approve. If we were not related, it would not signify;
Persuasion |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: boldly into that fire, he will discover it at once to be a lie,
an illusion, a mirage through which he might carry a sack of
gunpowder without being a penny the worse. Therefore let the fire
seem so terrible that only the hero, when in the fulness of time
he appears upon earth, will venture through it; and the problem
is solved. Wotan, with a breaking heart, takes leave of Brynhild;
throws her into a deep sleep; covers her with her long warshield;
summons Loki, who comes in the shape of a wall of fire
surrounding the mountain peak; and turns his back on Brynhild for
ever.
The allegory here is happily not so glaringly obvious to the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: to guess that, within a very short time, the hint of the
Prince's aide-de-camp would reappear in the form of a direct
proposal. Lansing himself would probably--as the one person in
the Hicks entourage with whom one could intelligibly commune-be
entrusted with the next step in the negotiations: he would be
asked, as the aide-de-camp would have said, "to feel the
ground." It was clearly part of the state policy of Teutoburg
to offer Miss Hicks, with the hand of its sovereign, an
opportunity to replenish its treasury.
What would the girl do? Lansing could not guess; yet he dimly
felt that her attitude would depend in a great degree upon his
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