| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: ungrateful a thing as to add those quite unnecessary fifteen words
to his test?--set a trap for me?--expose me as a slanderer of my own
town before my own people assembled in a public hall? It was
preposterous; it was impossible. His test would contain only the
kindly opening clause of my remark. Of that I had no shadow of
doubt. You would have thought as I did. You would not have
expected a base betrayal from one whom you had befriended and
against whom you had committed no offence. And so with perfect
confidence, perfect trust, I wrote on a piece of paper the opening
words--ending with "Go, and reform," --and signed it. When I was
about to put it in an envelope I was called into my back office, and
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: heroism was admirable. She had started with an irrepressible
shudder, as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her
heart; then, recovering herself, while her attendants were yet in
dismay, she took the lead, and paced calmly up the aisle. The
bell continued to swing, strike, and vibrate, with the same
doleful regularity as when a corpse is on its way to the tomb.
"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken," said
the widow, with a smile, to the clergyman at the altar. "But so
many weddings have been ushered in with the merriest peal of the
bells, and yet turned out unhappily, that I shall hope for better
fortune under such different auspices."
Twice Told Tales |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: Suddenly, after a space of time that I could not measure, I felt a
shock. The raft had not struck against any hard resistance, but had
suddenly been checked in its fall. A waterspout, an immense liquid
column, was beating upon the surface of the waters. I was
suffocating! I was drowning!
But this sudden flood was not of long duration. In a few seconds I
found myself in the air again, which I inhaled with all the force of
my lungs. My uncle and Hans were still holding me fast by the arms;
and the raft was still carrying us.
CHAPTER XLII.
HEADLONG SPEED UPWARD THROUGH THE HORRORS OF DARKNESS
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
