| 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: take no vital interest in it--indeed, you almost get tired of it.
As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only--
people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles,
ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to think
of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give
the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre
of those others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed
up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah
of outlanders gone rotten. Give me the home product every time.
Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would
suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: there. She withdrew; and, after a while, returned again with a
small tea-tray, and placed it on the chest of drawers, which served
as a dressing-table. Having civilly thanked her, I asked at what
time I should be expected to rise in the morning.
'The young ladies and gentlemen breakfast at half-past eight,
ma'am,' said she; 'they rise early; but, as they seldom do any
lessons before breakfast, I should think it will do if you rise
soon after seven.'
I desired her to be so kind as to call me at seven, and, promising
to do so, she withdrew. Then, having broken my long fast on a cup
of tea and a little thin bread and butter, I sat down beside the
Agnes Grey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: has driven political questions into the background. The
Communists (compare Rykov's remarks on this subject,
p. 175) believe that this is the natural result of social
revolution. They think that political parties will disappear
altogether and that people will band together, not for the
victory of one of several contending political parties, but
solely for economic cooperation or joint enterprise in art
or science. In support of this they point to the number of
their opponents who have become Communists, and to the
still greater number of non-Communists who are loyally
working with them for the economic reconstruction of the
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