| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: part of Aladdin's djinn; and many a parent has sunk beneath the burden
of this service. All the novelty we need is to organize it so that
instead of the individual child fastening like a parasite on its own
particular parents, the whole body of children should be thrown not
only upon the whole body of parents, but upon the celibates and
childless as well, whose present exemption from a full share in the
social burden of children is obviously unjust and unwholesome. Today
it is easy to find a widow who has at great cost to herself in pain,
danger, and disablement, borne six or eight children. In the same
town you will find rich bachelors and old maids, and married couples
with no children or with families voluntarily limited to two or three.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: leafage fluttered a number of gray birds with black and white
stripes and long tails. They were mocking-birds, and they were
singing as if they wanted to burst their throats. Venters
listened. One long, silver-tipped branch dropped almost to his
cave, and upon it, within a few yards of him, sat one of the
graceful birds. Venters saw the swelling and quivering of its
throat in song. He arose, and when he slid down out of his cave
the birds fluttered and flew farther away.
Venters stepped before the opening of the other cave and looked
in. The girl was awake, with wide eyes and listening look, and
she had a hand on Ring's neck.
Riders of the Purple Sage |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain: of it, and it was reckoned that in the course of that
thirty years he had told about that journey over a
million times and enjoyed it every time. And now
comes along a boy not quite fifteen, and sets everybody
admiring and gawking over HIS travels, and it just give
the poor old man the high strikes. It made him sick
to listen to Tom, and to hear the people say "My
land!" "Did you ever!" "My goodness sakes
alive!" and all such things; but he couldn't pull away
from it, any more than a fly that's got its hind leg fast
in the molasses. And always when Tom come to a
|
