| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling: inherent rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham;
looking pretty on paper only. Every one knows every one else far
too well for business purposes. How on earth can you rack and harry
and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his wife, and
live in the same Station with him? He says, "on the Monday
following," "I can't settle just yet." "You say, "All right, old
man," and think your self lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of
a two-thousand rupee debt. Any way you look at it, Indian racing is
immoral, and expensively immoral. Which is much worse. If a man
wants your money, he ought to ask for it, or send round a
subscription-list, instead of juggling about the country, with an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: evil. They are doing wisely and well now in declining to throw away the
scabbard as long as there is hope that a determined front will awe the
offender into submission: but the day may come when the scabbard must
be thrown away; and God grant that they may have the courage to do it.
It is reported that our rulers have said, that English diplomacy can no
longer recognise "nationalities," but only existing "governments." God
grant that they may see in time that the assertion of national life, as
a spiritual and indefeasible existence, was for centuries the central
idea of English policy; the idea by faith in which she delivered first
herself, and then the Protestant nations of the Continent, successively
from the yokes of Rome, of Spain, of France; and that they may reassert
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Commission in Lunacy by Honore de Balzac: which nature had given expression to noble feelings; lips which spoke
to the heart and proclaimed the man's intelligence and lucidity, a
gift of second-sight, and a heavenly temper; and you would have judged
him wrongly from looking merely at his sloping forehead, his fireless
eyes, and his shambling gait. His life answered to his countenance; it
was full of secret labor, and hid the virtue of a saint. His superior
knowledge of law proved so strong a recommendation at a time when
Napoleon was reorganizing it in 1808 and 1811, that, by the advice of
Cambaceres, he was one of the first men named to sit on the Imperial
High Court of Justice at Paris. Popinot was no schemer. Whenever any
demand was made, any request preferred for an appointment, the
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