| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years.
It is famished, it is crazed wit hunger by that time, and will be
entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied,
it can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is
measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long,
but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them,
and remains so, through thick and thin. Tom is this old man's angel;
he is infatuated with him. Tom can persuade him into things which
other people can't--not all things; I don't mean that,
but a good many--particularly one class of things: the things that
create or abolish personal partialities or prejudices in the old
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Island Nights' Entertainments by Robert Louis Stevenson: platform of the gallows, and these good folk had come to see me
hanged.
I felt I was getting daunted, and began to be afraid I looked it,
which would never do. Up I stood, made believe to stretch myself,
came down the verandah stair, and strolled towards the river.
There went a short buzz from one to the other, like what you hear
in theatres when the curtain goes up; and some of the nearest gave
back the matter of a pace. I saw a girl lay one hand on a young
man and make a gesture upward with the other; at the same time she
said something in the native with a gasping voice. Three little
boys sat beside my path, where, I must pass within three feet of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: to the expense of blood and treasure we have been already put to.
The object, contended for, ought always to bear some just proportion
to the expense. The removal of North, or the whole detestable junto,
is a matter unworthy the millions we have expended. A temporary stoppage
of trade, was an inconvenience, which would have sufficiently balanced
the repeal of all the acts complained of, had such repeals been obtained;
hut if the whole continent must take up arms, if every man must be a soldier,
it is scarcely worth our while to fight against a contemptible ministry only.
Dearly, dearly, do we pay for the repeal of the acts, if that is all
we fight for; for in a just estimation, it is as great a folly to pay
a Bunker-hill price for law, as for land. As I have always considered
Common Sense |
