| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pellucidar by Edgar Rice Burroughs: It was the first time I had heard him at his old habit
since my return to Pellucidar, and I had thought that
he had given up his little idiosyncrasy; but he hadn't.
Far from it.
I let him pray for a short time undisturbed, and then
as I was about to suggest that we had better be pushing
along one of the bears in our rear let out a roar that
made the earth fairly tremble beneath our feet.
It brought Perry to his feet as if he had been stung by
a wasp, and sent him racing ahead through the blind-
ing fog at a gait that I knew must soon end in disaster
Pellucidar |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: treason, the result of facts, but the treason of a system, the
subordination of national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the
degradation of the country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the
leaders of the antagonistic party which he had fought against. His
hatred of the men he had tried to serve was so virulent, that he would
gladly have joined the coalition that was about to be formed among
certain ambitious spirits who, at least, had one idea in common--that
of shaking off the yoke of the Court. But Marcas could only reply to
the envoy in the words of the Hotel de Ville:
"It is too late!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: even when I had fancied him most Aristophanesque. What was the
need of appealing to laughter, however, I could enviously enquire,
where you might appeal so confidently to measurement? Mr.
Saltram's queer figure, his thick nose and hanging lip, were fresh
to me: in the light of my old friend's fine cold symmetry they
presented mere success in amusing as the refuge of conscious
ugliness. Already, at hungry twenty-six, Gravener looked as blank
and parliamentary as if he were fifty and popular. In my scrap of
a residence--he had a worldling's eye for its futile conveniences,
but never a comrade's joke--I sounded Frank Saltram in his ears; a
circumstance I mention in order to note that even then I was
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