| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: been so wrought up, and now that historic and classical
event paled into insignificance in the glaring brilliancy
of a series of crimes and mysteries of a single night such
as not even the most sanguine of Oakdale's thrill lovers
could have hoped for.
There was, first, the mysterious disappearance of Abi-
gail Prim, the only daughter of Oakdale's wealthiest cit-
izen; there was the equally mysterious robbery of the
Prim home. Either one of these would have been suffi-
cient to have set Oakdale's multitudinous tongues wag-
ging for days; but they were not all. Old John Baggs, the
The Oakdale Affair |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Amory. "I like having a bunch of hot cats on top, but gosh,
Kerry, I've got to be one of them."
"But just now, Amory, you're only a sweaty bourgeois."
Amory lay for a moment without speaking.
"I won't belong," he said finally. "But I hate to get anywhere by
working for it. I'll show the marks, don't you know."
"Honorable scars." Kerry craned his neck suddenly at the street.
"There's Langueduc, if you want to see what he looks likeand
Humbird just behind."
Amory rose dynamically and sought the windows.
"Oh," he said, scrutinizing these worthies, "Humbird looks like a
This Side of Paradise |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides by Plato: certainly not upon this view; for the life which is temperate is supposed
to be the good. And of two things, one is true,--either never, or very
seldom, do the quiet actions in life appear to be better than the quick and
energetic ones; or supposing that of the nobler actions, there are as many
quiet, as quick and vehement: still, even if we grant this, temperance
will not be acting quietly any more than acting quickly and energetically,
either in walking or talking or in anything else; nor will the quiet life
be more temperate than the unquiet, seeing that temperance is admitted by
us to be a good and noble thing, and the quick have been shown to be as
good as the quiet.
I think, he said, Socrates, that you are right.
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