| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: recent times the signification of these terms has changed. The
Republicans are the representatives of the old Federalists, and
the Democrats of the old Republicans. - Trans. Note (1861).]] The
accession of the Federalists to power was, in my opinion, one of
the most fortunate incidents which accompanied the formation of
the great American Union; they resisted the inevitable
propensities of their age and of the country. But whether their
theories were good or bad, they had the effect of being
inapplicable, as a system, to the society which they professed to
govern, and that which occurred under the auspices of Jefferson
must therefore have taken place sooner or later. But their
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis: Wing's wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let's see if we can't gather him in."
At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two up-state
delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces red, their
voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive bootlegged whisky
and imploring the bell-boy, "Say, son, can you get us some more of this
embalming fluid?" They were smoking large cigars and dropping ashes and stubs
on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were telling stories. They were, in
fact, males in a happy state of nature.
Babbitt sighed, "I don't know how it strikes you hellions, but personally I
like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a couple of mountains
and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the aurora borealis around."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Professor by Charlotte Bronte: herself the office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to
her subalterns every invidious task of blame and punishment, that
they all regarded her with deference, if not with affection; her
teachers did not love her, but they submitted because they were
her inferiors in everything; the various masters who attended her
school were each and all in some way or other under her
influence; over one she had acquired power by her skilful
management of his bad temper; over another by little attentions
to his petty caprices; a third she had subdued by flattery; a
fourth--a timid man--she kept in awe by a sort of austere
decision of mien; me, she still watched, still tried by the most
The Professor |
