| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who,
in the battle of White Plains, being an excellent master of
defence, parried a musket-ball with a small-sword, insomuch that
he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the
hilt; in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the
sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that
had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was
persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to
a happy termination.
But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and
apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: finding its efforts to keep the Empire together under these,
strains and changing ideas greatly impeded by the entirely
sporting spirit with which Bert Smallways at home (by the
million) cast his vote, and by the tendency of his more highly
coloured equivalents to be disrespectful to irascible officials.
Their impertinence was excessive; it was no mere stone-throwing
and shouting. They would quote Burns at them and Mill and Darwin
and confute them in arguments.
Even more pacific than the British Empire were France and its
allies, the Latin powers, heavily armed states indeed, but
reluctant warriors, and in many ways socially and politically
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: dotage, gazing about them at things they did not see. Their deserted
salon, so filled with memories to them, was feebly lighted by a single
lamp which seemed expiring. Without the sparkling of the flame upon
the hearth, they might soon have been in total darkness.
A friend had just left them; and the chair on which he had been
sitting, remained where he left it, between the two Corsicans. Piombo
was casting glances at that chair,--glances full of thoughts, crowding
one upon another like remorse,--for the empty chair was Ginevra's.
Elisa Piombo watched the expressions that now began to cross her
husband's pallid face. Though long accustomed to divine his feelings
from the changeful agitations of his face, they seemed to-night so
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