| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: finest quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They're the oldest
family in the State. That was his daughter that got off the train.
She's been up to Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick.'
"I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I caught the young
lady walking in the front yard, down next to the paling fence. I
stopped and raised my hat--there wasn't any other way.
"'Excuse me,' says I, 'can you tell me where Mr. Hinkle lives?'
"She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see about the
weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just a slight twinkle of
fun in her eyes.
"'No one of that name lives in Birchton,' says she. 'That is,' she
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: the fifth century before Christ, when they had the greatest poets
and the greatest artists of the antique world, when the Parthenon
rose in loveliness at the bidding of a Phidias, and the philosopher
spake of wisdom in the shadow of the painted portico, and tragedy
swept in the perfection of pageant and pathos across the marble of
the stage. Were they an artistic people then? Not a bit of it.
What is an artistic people but a people who love their artists and
understand their art? The Athenians could do neither.
How did they treat Phidias? To Phidias we owe the great era, not
merely in Greek, but in all art - I mean of the introduction of the
use of the living model.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: wondered how she went on without sails, and swam up to her to see.
A school of dolphins were running races round and round her, going
three feet for her one, and Tom asked them the way to Shiny Wall:
but they did not know. Then he tried to find out how she moved,
and at last he saw her screw, and was so delighted with it that he
played under her quarter all day, till he nearly had his nose
knocked off by the fans, and thought it time to move. Then he
watched the sailors upon deck, and the ladies, with their bonnets
and parasols: but none of them could see him, because their eyes
were not opened, - as, indeed, most people's eyes are not.
At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a very pretty lady,
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