| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The United States Constitution: having one Vote; a Quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member
or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the
States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice
of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of
the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain
two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them
by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors,
and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day
shall be the same throughout the United States.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States,
The United States Constitution |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: heavy tread, bringing with him a smell of
cigar smoke and chill out-of-doors air.
When Alexander reached the library door,
he switched on the lights and stood six feet
and more in the archway, glowing with strength
and cordiality and rugged, blond good looks.
There were other bridge-builders in the
world, certainly, but it was always Alexander's
picture that the Sunday Supplement men wanted,
because he looked as a tamer of rivers
ought to look. Under his tumbled sandy
Alexander's Bridge |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: you admitted that this was true of our present statesmen, but not true of
former ones, and you preferred them to the others; yet they have turned out
to be no better than our present ones; and therefore, if they were
rhetoricians, they did not use the true art of rhetoric or of flattery, or
they would not have fallen out of favour.
CALLICLES: But surely, Socrates, no living man ever came near any one of
them in his performances.
SOCRATES: O, my dear friend, I say nothing against them regarded as the
serving-men of the State; and I do think that they were certainly more
serviceable than those who are living now, and better able to gratify the
wishes of the State; but as to transforming those desires and not allowing
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