| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: in return for all the benefits accruing from a $125.00 ring. His
profits are $122.00. Which of us is the biggest fakir?'
"'And when you sell a poor woman a pinch of sand for fifty cents to
keep her lamp from exploding,' says Bassett, 'what do you figure her
gross earnings to be, with sand at forty cents a ton?'
"'Listen,' says I. 'I instruct her to keep her lamp clean and well
filled. If she does that it can't burst. And with the sand in it she
knows it can't, and she don't worry. It's a kind of Industrial
Christian Science. She pays fifty cents, and gets both Rockefeller and
Mrs. Eddy on the job. It ain't everybody that can let the gold-dust
twins do their work.'
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: first hereditary and then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of
the people, who dispense offices and power to those who appear to be most
deserving of them. Neither is a man rejected from weakness or poverty or
obscurity of origin, nor honoured by reason of the opposite, as in other
states, but there is one principle--he who appears to be wise and good is a
governor and ruler. The basis of this our government is equality of birth;
for other states are made up of all sorts and unequal conditions of men,
and therefore their governments are unequal; there are tyrannies and there
are oligarchies, in which the one party are slaves and the others masters.
But we and our citizens are brethren, the children all of one mother, and
we do not think it right to be one another's masters or servants; but the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "The woman is beautiful," said the padwar. "She will not long go
begging in the city of Manator," and then they spoke of other
matters--of the doings of the palace, of the expedition of U-Dor,
until the messenger returned to say that O-Tar bade them bring
the prisoners to him.
They passed then through a massive doorway, which, when opened,
revealed the great council chamber of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator,
beyond. A central aisle led from the doorway the full length of
the great hall, terminating at the steps of a marble dais upon
which a man sat in a great throne-chair. Upon either side of the
aisle were ranged rows of highly carved desks and chairs of skeel
The Chessmen of Mars |
