| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: now if I hadn't got to go to my office every day? Thousands of people
would tell you the same thing--thousands of women. I tell you, work is
the only thing that saved me, Ralph." He set his mouth, as if her
words rained blows on him; he looked as if he had made up his mind to
bear anything she might say, in silence. He had deserved it, and there
would be relief in having to bear it. But she broke off, and rose as
if to fetch something from the next room. Before she reached the door
she turned back, and stood facing him, self-possessed, and yet defiant
and formidable in her composure.
"It's all turned out splendidly for me," she said. "It will for you,
too. I'm sure of that. Because, after all, Katharine is worth it."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr.
Raymond turned sharply to his friend.
"Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a
perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it."
"And there is no danger at any other stage?"
"None; absolutely no physical danger whatsoever, I give
you my word. You are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know
my history. I have devoted myself to transcendental medicine
for the last twenty years. I have heard myself called quack and
charlatan and impostor, but all the while I knew I was on the
right path. Five years ago I reached the goal, and since then
The Great God Pan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: the king fearing this city and wanting to stand aloof, when he saw the
Lacedaemonians growing weary of the war at sea, asked of us, as the price
of his alliance with us and the other allies, to give up the Hellenes in
Asia, whom the Lacedaemonians had previously handed over to him, he
thinking that we should refuse, and that then he might have a pretence for
withdrawing from us. About the other allies he was mistaken, for the
Corinthians and Argives and Boeotians, and the other states, were quite
willing to let them go, and swore and covenanted, that, if he would pay
them money, they would make over to him the Hellenes of the continent, and
we alone refused to give them up and swear. Such was the natural nobility
of this city, so sound and healthy was the spirit of freedom among us, and
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