| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: -- for of the Isosceles I take no account. But as we ascend
in the social scale, the process of discriminating and being
discriminated by hearing increases in difficulty, partly because
voices are assimilated, partly because the faculty of
voice-discrimination is a plebeian virtue not much developed among
the Aristocracy. And wherever there is any danger of imposture
we cannot trust to this method. Amongst our lowest orders,
the vocal organs are developed to a degree more than correspondent
with those of hearing, so that an Isosceles can easily feign the voice
of a Polygon, and, with some training, that of a Circle himself.
A second method is therefore more commonly resorted to.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: It's perfectly safe,' urged Miss Harris, but I felt compelled to go
myself to see lady Pilkey's landscape. When I returned I found her
still sitting in grave absorption before the studies that had taken
us so by surprise. Her face was full of a soft new light; I had
never before seen the spring touched in her that could flood it like
that.
'You were very nearly right,' I announced; 'but the blaze of colour
was in the middle distance, and there was a torrent in the
foreground that quite put it out. And the picture does take the
Society's silver medal.'
'I can not decide,' she replied without looking at me, 'between the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: Vitellius beckoned him to his side and gave him an order for the
execution, to be transmitted to the soldiers placed on guard over the
dungeon. This execution would be a relief, he thought. In a few
moments all would be over!
But for once Mannaeus did not perform a commission satisfactorily. He
left the hall but soon returned, in a state of great perturbation.
During forty years he had exercised the functions of the public
executioner. It was he that had drowned Aristobulus, strangled
Alexander, burned Mattathias alive, beheaded Zozimus, Pappus,
Josephus, and Antipater; but he dared not kill Iaokanann! His teeth
chattered and his whole body trembled.
Herodias |
