| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger: neglected aspect of this problem. Child labor shows us how cheaply we
value childhood. And moreover, it shows us that cheap childhood is
the inevitable result of chance parenthood. Child labor is
organically bound up with the problem of uncontrolled breeding and the
large family.
The selective draft of 1917--which was designed to choose for military
service only those fulfiling definite requirements of physical and
mental fitness--showed some of the results of child labor. It
established the fact that the majority of American children never got
beyond the sixth grade, because they were forced to leave school at
that time. Our overadvertised compulsory education does not compel--
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: Total abstinence from food could be understood, if it were
accompanied by inertia: immobility is not life. But the young
Lycosae, although usually quiet on their mother's back, are at all
times ready for exercise and for agile swarming. When they fall
from the maternal perambulator, they briskly pick themselves up,
briskly scramble up a leg and make their way to the top. It is a
splendidly nimble and spirited performance. Besides, once seated,
they have to keep a firm balance in the mass; they have to stretch
and stiffen their little limbs in order to hang on to their
neighbours. As a matter of fact, there is no absolute rest for
them. Now physiology teaches us that not a fibre works without
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: and how much we had lost, to attain to that composure; and which
had been upon the whole our best estate: when we sat there prating
sensibly like men of some experience, or when we shared our
timorous and hopeful counsels in a western islet.
CHAPTER IX. THOMAS STEVENSON - CIVIL ENGINEER
THE death of Thomas Stevenson will mean not very much to the
general reader. His service to mankind took on forms of which the
public knows little and understands less. He came seldom to
London, and then only as a task, remaining always a stranger and a
convinced provincial; putting up for years at the same hotel where
his father had gone before him; faithful for long to the same
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