| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: Captain Giles balanced his big benevolent head
thoughtfully. "He didn't get it," he repeated
very slowly. "No, not likely either, with Kent.
Kent is no end sorry you left him. He gives you
the name of a good seaman, too."
I flung away the paper I was still holding. I sat
up, I slapped the table with my open palm. I
wanted to know why he would keep harping on
that, my absolutely private affair. It was exas-
perating, really.
Captain Giles silenced me by the perfect
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lost Princess of Oz by L. Frank Baum: who could bend iron bars with just his hands!"
"But mercy me, it's no trick to bend iron bars," said His Majesty.
"Tell me, could this man crush a block of stone with his bare hands?"
"No one could do that," declared the boy.
"If I had a block of stone, I'd show you," said the Czarover, looking
around the room. "Ah, here is my throne. The back is too high,
anyhow, so I'll just break off a piece of that." He rose to his feet
and tottered in an uncertain way around the throne. Then he took hold
of the back and broke off a piece of marble over a foot thick.
"This," said he, coming back to his seat, "is very solid marble and
much harder than ordinary stone. Yet I can crumble it easily with my
The Lost Princess of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: PROTARCHUS: Certainly I did; but I am now in a great strait, and I must
entreat you, Socrates, to be our spokesman, and then we shall not say
anything wrong or disrespectful of your favourite.
SOCRATES: I must obey you, Protarchus; nor is the task which you impose a
difficult one; but did I really, as Philebus implies, disconcert you with
my playful solemnity, when I asked the question to what class mind and
knowledge belong?
PROTARCHUS: You did, indeed, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Yet the answer is easy, since all philosophers assert with one
voice that mind is the king of heaven and earth--in reality they are
magnifying themselves. And perhaps they are right. But still I should
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