| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution,
the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied,
if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.
It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision
in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all
the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will
endure forever--it being impossible to destroy it except by some action
not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association
of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract,
be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: and exclaims in horror.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" he says in a complaining voice. "Holy
Martyr Vlassy! Though they are bullocks, though they are beasts,
yet they want to eat and drink as men do. . . . It's four days
and nights since they have drunk or eaten. Oh, dear! oh, dear!"
Yasha follows him and does what he is told like an obedient son.
He does not like the old man's frequent visits to the refreshment
bar. Though he is afraid of his father, he cannot refrain from
remarking on it.
"So you have begun already!" he says, looking sternly at the old
man. "What are you rejoicing at? Is it your name-day or what?"
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: and science alike were in vain. By the month of January, 1838, Marcas
himself felt that he had but a few days to live.
The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months never even
sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the greatest contempt for
the Government; he seemed to doubt what the fate of France might be,
and it was this doubt that had made him ill. He had, he thought,
detected treason in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable
treason, the result of facts, but the treason of a system, the
subordination of national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the
degradation of the country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one of the
|
