| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith
adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only
available one, thus proving that he is himself available for
any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth
than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native,
who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man, and,
and my neighbor says, has a bone is his back which you
cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault:
the population has been returned too large. How many men
are there to a square thousand miles in the country?
Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: acquaintance, which is to be sought in travel; that
which is most of all profitable, is acquaintance
with the secretaries and employed men of ambas-
sadors: for so in travelling in one country, he shall
suck the experience of many. Let him also see, and
visit, eminent persons in all kinds, which are of
great name abroad; that he may be able to tell,
how the life agreeth with the fame. For quarrels,
they are with care and discretion to be avoided.
They are commonly for mistresses, healths, place,
and words. And let a man beware, how he keepeth
Essays of Francis Bacon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: no need of letters; but after publishing one volume of
brief and exquisite literary appreciations, of which one
hundred and twenty copies were sold, thirty given away,
and the balance eventually destroyed by the publishers
(as per contract) to make room for more marketable
material, he had abandoned his real calling, and taken
a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where fashion-
plates and paper patterns alternated with New England
love-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks.
On the subject of "Hearth-fires" (as the paper was
called) he was inexhaustibly entertaining; but beneath
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