| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: DUCHESS
[throws herself on her knees]
Then slay me now! I have spilt blood to-night,
You shall spill more, so we go hand in hand
To heaven or to hell. Draw your sword, Guido.
Quick, let your soul go chambering in my heart,
It will but find its master's image there.
Nay, if you will not slay me with your sword,
Bid me to fall upon this reeking knife,
And I will do it.
GUIDO
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: handsome suits of armour that were manufactured at Carthage; the Great
Council voted sums of money for their purchase. But it was only fair,
so the horsemen pretended, that the Republic should indemnify them for
their horses; one had lost three at such a siege, another, five during
such a march, another, fourteen in the precipices. Stallions from
Hecatompylos were offered to them, but they preferred money.
Next they demanded that they should be paid in money (in pieces of
money, and not in leathern coins) for all the corn that was owing to
them, and at the highest price that it had fetched during the war; so
that they exacted four hundred times as much for a measure of meal as
they had given for a sack of wheat. Such injustice was exasperating;
Salammbo |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Twelve Stories and a Dream by H. G. Wells: the stick, hitting him in the face within an inch of the eye.
Mr. Vincey, stunned and astonished, staggered back, lost his footing,
and fell heavily on the pavement. It seemed to him that Mr. Bessel
leapt over him as he fell. When he looked again Mr. Bessel had
vanished, and a policeman and a number of garden porters and salesmen
were rushing past towards Long Acre in hot pursuit.
With the assistance of several passers-by--for the whole street
was speedily alive with running people--Mr. Vincey struggled to
his feet. He at once became the centre of a crowd greedy to see
his injury. A multitude of voices competed to reassure him of his
safety, and then to tell him of the behaviour of the madman, as
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