| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: bubbling over with the joy of life, ready for quarrel if quarrel
also spelled fun, drinking deep, and heavy-handed and fearless in
their cups. But each of these rivermen had two or three hundred
dollars to "blow" as soon as possible. The pickings were good. Men
got rich very quickly at this business. And there existed this
great advantage in favour of the dive-keeper: nobody cared what
happened to a riverman. You could pound him over the head with a
lead pipe, or drug his drink, or choke him to insensibility, or rob
him and throw him out into the street, or even drop him tidily
through a trap-door into the river flowing conveniently beneath.
Nobody bothered--unless, of course, the affair was so bungled as to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: the inelegance of this scrawl, and believe me yours in haste,
William D. Pitman.'
Armed with this he set forth and rang the bell of No. 233 King's
Road, the private residence of Michael Finsbury. He had met the
lawyer at a time of great public excitement in Chelsea; Michael,
who had a sense of humour and a great deal of careless kindness
in his nature, followed the acquaintance up, and, having come to
laugh, remained to drop into a contemptuous kind of friendship.
By this time, which was four years after the first meeting,
Pitman was the lawyer's dog.
'No,' said the elderly housekeeper, who opened the door in
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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: judicial authority, its action would not have been limited to the
circle of public functionaries, since the most dangerous enemies
of the State may be in the possession of no functions at all; and
this is especially true in republics, where party influence is
the first of authorities, and where the strength of many a reader
is increased by his exercising no legal power.
If it had been the intention of the American legislator to
give society the means of repressing State offences by exemplary
punishment, according to the practice of ordinary justice, the
resources of the penal code would all have been placed at the
disposal of the political tribunals. But the weapon with which
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