| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collection of Antiquities by Honore de Balzac: until I had your authorization; but I, Comte d'Esgrignon, was pressed
for money, so I---- Come, come, your prosecution is a piece of
revengeful spite. Forgery is defined by the law as an attempt to
obtain any advantage which rightfully belongs to another. There is no
forgery here, according to the letter of the Roman law, nor according
to the spirit of modern jurisprudence (always from the point of a
civil action, for we are not here concerned with the falsification of
public or authentic documents). Between private individuals the
essence of a forgery is the intent to defraud; where is it in this
case? In what times are we living, gentlemen? Here is the President
going away to balk a preliminary examination which ought to be over by
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wyoming by William MacLeod Raine: here's Jim Henson! Denver has explained the situation to you, I
presume. I want you to go up to the telegraph office and stay
there all day. Go to lunch with the operator when he goes.
Don't let him talk privately to anybody, not even for a few
seconds. I don't want you to seem to have him under guard before
outsiders, but let him know it very plainly. He is not to mention
a wire I sent or the answer to it--not to anybody, Jim. Is that
plain?"
"Y'u bet! He's a clam, all right, till the order is
countermanded." And the young man departed with a cheerful grin
that assured Helen she had nothing to fear from official leaks.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Crito by Plato: you may be justified before the princes of the world below. For neither
will you nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this
life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart in
innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws,
but of men. But if you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for
injury, breaking the covenants and agreements which you have made with us,
and wronging those whom you ought least of all to wrong, that is to say,
yourself, your friends, your country, and us, we shall be angry with you
while you live, and our brethren, the laws in the world below, will receive
you as an enemy; for they will know that you have done your best to destroy
us. Listen, then, to us and not to Crito.'
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