| 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: wrong or shocking in this fact; and there is no harm in it if only it
be sensibly faced and provided for. The mischief that it does at
present is produced by our efforts to ignore it, or to smother it
under a heap of sentimental lies and false pretences.
Childhood as a State of Sin
Unfortunately all this nonsense tends to accumulate as we become more
sympathetic. In many families it is still the custom to treat
childhood frankly as a state of sin, and impudently proclaim the
monstrous principle that little children should be seen and not heard,
and to enforce a set of prison rules designed solely to make
cohabitation with children as convenient as possible for adults
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: The other two were Duncan M'Dougal and Donald M'Kenzie. To these
were subsequently added Mr. Wilson Price Hunt, of New Jersey. As
this gentleman was a native born citizen of the United States, a
person of great probity and worth, he was selected by Mr. Astor
to be his chief agent, and to represent him in the contemplated
establishment.
On the 23d of June, 1810, articles of agreement were entered into
between Mr. Astor and those four gentlemen, acting for themselves
and for the several persons who had already agreed to become, or
should thereafter become, associated under the firm of "The
Pacific Fur Company."
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: he chooses from preference a collateral relative. In some far-eastern
lands he must so restrict himself by law. In Korea, for instance,
he can only adopt an agnate and one of a lower generation than his own.
But in Japan his choice is not so limited. In so praiseworthy an
act as the perpetuation of his unimportant family line, it is deemed
unwise in that progressive land to hinder him from unconsciously
bettering it by the way. He is consequently permitted to adopt
anybody. As people are by no means averse to being adopted, the
power to adopt whom he will gives him more voice in the matter of
his unnatural offspring than he ever had in the selection of a more
natural one.
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