The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: and glance around from face to face, collecting applause,
and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to see.
Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story
finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it.
Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will
divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual
and indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it
is a nub.
Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience
presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise,
as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: E. A." bk. ii. ch. xxi.
[6] Lit. "pentecontarch;" see Dem. "In Pol." 1212.
[7] Aristot. "Pol." vi. 7; Jowett, "The Politics of Aristotle," vol.
i. p. 109.
[8] {klerotoi}, {airetoi}.
[9] Reading with Kirchhoff, {epeo tou}, or if {epeita}, "in the next
place."
[10] Hipparch.
[11] Cf. "Hipparch." i. 9; "Econ." ii. 8.
[12] E.g. the {dikasteria}.
In the next place, in regard to what some people are puzzled to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: over-zealous Republicans. The prominent Republican editor, Horace
Greeley, printed in his paper, the "New York Tribune," a long
"Open Letter," ostentatiously addressed to Mr. Lincoln, full of
unjust accusations, his general charge being that the President
and many army officers were neglecting their duty through a
kindly feeling for slavery. The open letter which Mr. Lincoln
wrote in reply is remarkable not alone for the skill with which
he answered this attack, but also for its great dignity.
"As to the policy I 'seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not
meant to leave anyone in doubt. . . . My paramount object in this
struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to
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