| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: weeds for his night's repast. Sometimes, indeed, the jaguar, as he
climbs from one tree-top to another after his prey, wakens the
monkeys clustered on the boughs, and they again arouse the birds,
and ten minutes of unearthly roars, howls, shrieks, and cacklings
make the forest ring as if all pandemonium had broke loose; but
that soon dies away again; and, even while it lasts, it is too
common a matter to awaken the sleepers, much less to interrupt the
council of war which is going on beside the watch-fire, between the
three adventurers and the faithful Yeo. A hundred times have they
held such a council, and in vain; and, for aught they know, this
one will be as fruitless as those which have gone before it.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: between the plain and simple honesty of purpose and
breeding of our American home life and the tinseled
though polished hypocrisy and knavery of foreign
fashionable society is finely delineated, and no doubt
suggested the name of the play. Thoroughly natural
in its plan and characters, it was a bold venture of a
young writer in a new literary domain.
The character of Jonathan is a thoroughly original
conception; nothing of the typical Yankee, since so
familiar and popular, had as yet appeared, either on
the stage or in print.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: in 1640, began in like manner by drawing up a social contract,
which was acceded to by all the interested parties. See "Pitkin's
History," pp. 42 and 47.]
This happened in 1620, and from that time forwards the
emigration went on. The religious and political passions which
ravaged the British Empire during the whole reign of Charles I
drove fresh crowds of sectarians every year to the shores of
America. In England the stronghold of Puritanism was in the
middle classes, and it was from the middle classes that the
majority of the emigrants came. The population of New England
increased rapidly; and whilst the hierarchy of rank despotically
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