| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gentle Grafter by O. Henry: it, Pick?"
"You bet," says I.
XIII
HOSTAGES TO MOMUS
I
I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one
time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and
undertook a thing that I'd have to apologize for even under the New
Jersey trust laws.
Me and Caligula Polk, of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in the
Mexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and monte
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: 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?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak;
but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by
the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than
the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of
Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the
Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured,
and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: every where were so profusely displayed.
The road led through an olive-grove, and here the solitary inn was situated.
Ten or twelve crippled-beggars had encamped outside. The healthiest of them
resembled, to use an expression of Marryat's, "Hunger's eldest son when he had
come of age"; the others were either blind, had withered legs and crept about
on their hands, or withered arms and fingerless hands. It was the most
wretched misery, dragged from among the filthiest rags. "Excellenza,
miserabili!" sighed they, thrusting forth their deformed limbs to view. Even
the hostess, with bare feet, uncombed hair, and dressed in a garment of
doubtful color, received the guests grumblingly. The doors were fastened with
a loop of string; the floor of the rooms presented a stone paving half torn
Fairy Tales |
