| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: eyes are good for nothing but to roll about like sugar-balls--which
they greatly resemble--in a child's mouth. She can't use them."
"Use them? Why, she does nothing else."
"To make fools of young men, but not to read or write, not to do
any sort of work. She never opens a book, and her maid writes her
notes. You'll say that those who live in glass houses shouldn't
throw stones. Of course I know that if I didn't wear my goggles I
shouldn't be good for much."
"Do you mean that Miss Saunt ought to sport such things?" I
exclaimed with more horror than I meant to show.
"I don't prescribe for her; I don't know that they're what she
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: would ever be in the woods and wilderness of America; that
servitude and hard labour were things gentlemen could never
stoop to; that it was but the way to force them to be their own
executioners afterwards, which was much worse; and that
therefore he could not have any patience when he did but
think of being transported.
I used the utmost of my endeavour to persuade him, and joined
that known woman's rhetoric to it--I mean, that of tears. I told
him the infamy of a public execution was certainly a greater
pressure upon the spirits of a gentleman than any of the
mortifications that he could meet with abroad could be; that
Moll Flanders |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: France and Spain never were. nor perhaps ever will be our enemies
as AMERICANS, but as our being the subjects of GREAT BRITAIN.
But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame
upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young,
nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion,
if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true,
or only partly so and the phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY
hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites,
with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias
on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England,
is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum
Common Sense |
