| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: mirror on his coat-sleeve.
"Well, Doctor," said the girl, anxiously, "it's a dreadful
disfigurement, isn't it?" adding, "What can you do about
it?"
"Well," answered McTeague, slowly, looking vaguely about on
the floor of the room, "the roots of the broken tooth are
still in the gum; they'll have to come out, and I guess I'll
have to pull that other bicuspid. Let me look again. Yes,"
he went on in a moment, peering into her mouth with the
mirror, "I guess that'll have to come out, too." The tooth
was loose, discolored, and evidently dead. "It's a curious
McTeague |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: these matters, would you not?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I should.
SOCRATES: And could you speak falsehoods about them equally well? I must
beg, Hippias, that you will answer me with the same frankness and
magnanimity which has hitherto characterized you. If a person were to ask
you what is the sum of 3 multiplied by 700, would not you be the best and
most consistent teller of a falsehood, having always the power of speaking
falsely as you have of speaking truly, about these same matters, if you
wanted to tell a falsehood, and not to answer truly? Would the ignorant
man be better able to tell a falsehood in matters of calculation than you
would be, if you chose? Might he not sometimes stumble upon the truth,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: CAVEAT EMPTOR! what care I?'
As to Amphion's tuneful kit
Thebes rose, with towers encircling it;
As to the Mage's brandished wand
A spiry palace clove the sand;
To Thin's indomitable financing,
That phantom crescent kept advancing.
When first the brazen bells of churches
Called clerk and parson to their perches,
The worshippers of every sect
Already viewed it with respect;
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