| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: "Pardon me, madame, for recalling unpleasant memories, but I have
a little idea"--Poirot's "little ideas" were becoming a perfect
byword--"and would like to ask one or two questions."
"Of me? Certainly."
"You are too amiable, madame. What I want to ask is this: the
door leading into Mrs. Inglethorp's room from that of
Mademoiselle Cynthia, it was bolted, you say?"
"Certainly it was bolted," replied Mary Cavendish, rather
surprised. "I said so at the inquest."
"Bolted?"
"Yes." She looked perplexed.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Case of the Registered Letter by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: out, smoothed and read it. It was a post office receipt for a
registered letter. The date was still clear, but the name of the
person to whom the letter had been addressed was illegible. The
creases of the paper and a certain dampness, as if it had been
inadvertently touched by a wet finger, had smeared the writing.
But the letter had been sent the day before the death of John
Siders, and it had been registered from the main post office in
G-. This was sufficient for Muller. Then he turned to the desk.
Here also there was nothing that could help him. But a sudden
thought, came to him, and he took up the blotting pad. This, to
his delight, was in the form of a book with a handsome embroidered
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crowd by Gustave le Bon: functionaries, and where a function is obtained, as in France, by
competitive examination, in which the only test is the
imperturbable recitation of bulky manuals. The army of educated
persons without employment is considered in China at the present
day as a veritable national calamity. It is the same in India
where, since the English have opened schools, not for educating
purposes, as is the case in England itself, but simply to furnish
the indigenous inhabitants with instruction, there has been
formed a special class of educated persons, the Baboos, who, when
they do not obtain employment, become the irreconcilable enemies
of the English rule. In the case of all the Baboos, whether
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