| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: Shakespere was his constant delight. A copy of Shakespere's works
was even to be found in the busy Executive Office, from which
most books were banished. The President not only liked to read
the great poet's plays, but to see them acted; and when the
gifted actor Hackett came to Washington, he was invited to the
White House, where the two discussed the character of Falstaff,
and the proper reading of many scenes and passages.
While he was President, Mr. Lincoln did not attempt to read the
newspapers. His days were long, beginning early and ending late,
but they were not long enough for that. One of his secretaries
brought him a daily memorandum of the important news they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: necessity. I had always held that a man who played the spy on a
woman was beneath contempt. Then, I admit I was afraid of what I
might learn. For a time, however, this promised to be a negligible
quantity. The streets of the straggling little mountain town had
been clean-washed of humanity by the downpour. Windows and doors
were inhospitably shut, and from around an occasional drawn shade
came narrow strips of light that merely emphasized our gloom. When
Hotchkiss' umbrella turned inside out, I stopped.
"I don't know where you are going," I snarled, "I don't care. But
I'm going to get under cover inside of ten seconds. I'm not
amphibious."
The Man in Lower Ten |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nana, Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille by Emile Zola: Venus. The gods held a consultation and decided to go and hold an
inquiry on earth before granting the deceived husband satisfaction.
It was then that Diana surprised a tender conversation between Venus
and Mars and vowed that she would not take her eyes off them during
the whole of the voyage. There was also a scene where Love, played
by a little twelve-year-old chit, answered every question put to her
with "Yes, Mamma! No, Mamma!" in a winy-piny tone, her fingers in
her nose. At last Jupiter, with the severity of a master who is
growing cross, shut Love up in a dark closet, bidding her conjugate
the verb "I love" twenty times. The finale was more appreciated: it
was a chorus which both troupe and orchestra performed with great
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