| The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: people of a Territory had a right to settle the slavery question
to suit themselves. Being a clever juggler with words, he
explained away the difference by saying that a master might have
a perfect right to his slave in a Territory, and yet that right
could do him no good unless it were protected by laws in force
where his slave happened to be. Such laws depended entirely on
the will of the people living in the Territory, and so, after
all, they had the deciding voice. This reasoning brought upon him
the displeasure of President Buchanan and all the Democrats who
believed as he did, and Douglas found himself forced either to
deny what he had already told the voters of Illinois, or to begin
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: regret, and the other members were just grouping themselves
comfortably about Osric Dane when the latter, to their dismay,
started up from the sofa on which she had been deferentially
enthroned.
"Oh wait--do wait, and I'll go with you!" she called out to Mrs.
Roby; and, seizing the hands of the disconcerted members, she
administered a series of farewell pressures with the mechanical
haste of a railway-conductor punching tickets.
"I'm so sorry--I'd quite forgotten--" she flung back at them from
the threshold; and as she joined Mrs. Roby, who had turned in
surprise at her appeal, the other ladies had the mortification of
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