| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde: have often observed that in married households the champagne is
rarely of a first-rate brand.
ALGERNON. Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralising as that?
LANE. I believe it IS a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very
little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been
married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding
between myself and a young person.
ALGERNON. [Languidly.] I don't know that I am much interested in
your family life, Lane.
LANE. No, sir; it is not a very interesting subject. I never
think of it myself.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: pass through, or to stop at on the trip, plainly marked. He was
intelligent enough to observe everything of importance in the
ports through which he passed, and it was interesting to hear him
tell of the things he had seen, and his characterization of some
of the people he had visited.
"What did Your Highness think of the relative characteristics of
the Germans and the French, as you saw them?" I asked him at the
same dinner.
"The people in Berlin," said he, "get up early in the morning and
go to their business, while the people in Paris get up in the
evening and go to the theatre."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: that he is! is in illegal possession of a stolen bicycle, a
stolen young lady, and two stolen names, established with them in
an hotel that is quite beyond his means, and immensely proud of
himself in a somnolent way for these incomparable follies. There
are occasions when a moralising novelist can merely wring his
hands and leave matters to take their course. For all Hoopdriver
knows or cares he may be locked up the very first thing to-morrow
morning for the rape of the cycle. Then in Bognor, let alone that
melancholy vestige, Bechamel (with whom our dealings are, thank
Goodness! over), there is a Coffee Tavern with a steak Mr.
Hoopdriver ordered, done to a cinder long ago, his American-cloth
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