| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: and a man guiding his upright pencil from right to left across the
sheet, writes home the news of Monterey to the Celestial Empire.
The woods and the Pacific rule between them the climate of this
seaboard region. On the streets of Monterey, when the air does not
smell salt from the one, it will be blowing perfumed from the
resinous tree-tops of the other. For days together a hot, dry air
will overhang the town, close as from an oven, yet healthful and
aromatic in the nostrils. The cause is not far to seek, for the
woods are afire, and the hot wind is blowing from the hills. These
fires are one of the great dangers of California. I have seen from
Monterey as many as three at the same time, by day a cloud of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: tones sank almost away on these words.
"We should prefer to wait, then. You will leave your address. In
half-pound boxes, I suppose?"
"Boxes? Oh, yes--I hadn't thought--no--just a big, round one. Like this,
you know!" His arms embraced a circular space of air. "With plenty of
icing."
I do not think that there was any smile on the other side of the counter;
there was, at any rate, no hint of one in the voice. "And how many
pounds?"
He was again staggered. "Why--a--I never ordered one before. I want
plenty--and the very best, the very best. Each person would eat a pound,
wouldn't they? Or would two be nearer? I think I had better leave it all
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: opinion, which is the vital force in every law in a free
government. This is a subject that our Constitution failed to
regulate, because it was not contemplated by its authors. It is
a question that will settle itself, without serious difficulty.
The equality in the suffrage, thus guaranteed to the negro race,
alone - for it was not intended to include other colored races -
creates a new phase of political conditions that M. De
Tocqueville could not foresee. Yet, in his commendation of the
local town and county governments, he applauds and sustains that
elementary feature of our political organization which, in the
end, will render harmless this wide departure from the original
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