| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: of the size and importance of English opposition to the policy of George
III; in group five nothing is said about this at all. The boys and girls
who studied books in group five would grow up believing that England was
undividedly autocratic, tyrannical, and hostile to our liberty. In his
careful and conscientious classification, Mr. Altschul gives us the books
in use twenty years ago (and hence responsible for the opinion of
Americans now between thirty and forty years old) and books in use
to-day, and hence responsible for the opinion of those American men and
women who will presently be grown up and will prolong for another
generation the school-taught ignorance and prejudice of their fathers and
mothers. I select from Mr. Altschul's catalogue only those books in use
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: slimness was outlined against the dusk of the branches. Selden
followed her, and still without speaking they seated themselves
on a bench beside the fountain.
Suddenly she raised her eyes with the beseeching earnestness of a
child. "You never speak to me--you think hard things of me," she
murmured.
"I think of you at any rate, God knows!" he said.
"Then why do we never see each other? Why can't we be friends?
You promised once to help me," she continued in the same tone, as
though the words were drawn from her unwillingly.
"The only way I can help you is by loving you," Selden said in a
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: to my enthusiasm. My little store of money would soon be exhausted,
and since it would be unsafe for me to go on the wharves for work,
and I had no introductions elsewhere, the prospect for me was far from
cheerful. I saw the wisdom of keeping away from the ship-yards,
for, if pursued, as I felt certain I should be, Mr. Auld, my "master,"
would naturally seek me there among the calkers. Every door seemed closed
against me. I was in the midst of an ocean of my fellow-men,
and yet a perfect stranger to every one. I was without home,
without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work,
and without any definite knowledge as to what course to take,
or where to look for succor. In such an extremity, a man had something
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