| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: themselves together to reduce it.' I know not which of the two I
should admire the more: the simplicity of the multitude or the
audacity of the adventurer. But such are the subtleties, such the
quibbling reasons, with which he blinds and leads this people. How
long a course so tortuous can be pursued with safety I am incapable
of guessing; not long, one would suppose; and yet this singular man
has been treading the mazes for five years, and his favour at court
and his popularity among the lodges still endure unbroken.
I have the privilege of slightly knowing him. Heavily and somewhat
clumsily built, of a vast, disjointed, rambling frame, he can still
pull himself together, and figure, not without admiration, in the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: Richards had the embarrassed look of a person who is caught.
"I am ashamed to confess it, Mary, but--"
"It's no matter, Edward, I was thinking the same question myself."
"I hope so. State it."
"You were thinking, if a body could only guess out WHAT THE REMARK
WAS that Goodson made to the stranger."
"It's perfectly true. I feel guilty and ashamed. And you?"
"I'm past it. Let us make a pallet here; we've got to stand watch
till the bank vault opens in the morning and admits the sack. . . Oh
dear, oh dear--if we hadn't made the mistake!"
The pallet was made, and Mary said:
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: say like the old farmer is reported to have said,--"It caint be
trew, because my son John kin holler as loud as any man in all
this country, an' he caint be heerd mor'n two miles." Kuang Hsu
believed it, and at once ordered that a telephone be secured for
him.
In 1894 the Christian women of China decided to present a New
Testament to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday which
occurred the following year. New type was prepared, the finest
foreign paper secured, and the book was made after the best style
of the printer's art, with gilt borders, gilt edges, and bound in
silver of an embossed bamboo pattern and encased in a silver box.
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