| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: but not liking to reflect on the inadequacy of Mrs. Ballinger's
establishment she sought a round-about satisfaction in
depreciating her savoir faire.
"I said from the first that we ought to have had a subject ready.
It's what always happens when you're unprepared. Now if we'd
only got up Xingu--"
The slowness of Mrs. Plinth's mental processes was always allowed
for by the Club; but this instance of it was too much for Mrs.
Ballinger's equanimity.
"Xingu!" she scoffed. "Why, it was the fact of our knowing so
much more about it than she did--unprepared though we were--that
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: "I bear no malice," said he to the Daemon, in a gentle voice; "and I
am sure the world would be a dreary place without you. So, good
morning, and a Merry Christmas to you!"
With these words he stepped out to greet the bright morning, and a
moment later he was trudging along, whistling softly to himself, on
his way to his home in the Laughing Valley.
Marching over the snow toward the mountain was a vast army, made up of
the most curious creatures imaginable. There were numberless knooks
from the forest, as rough and crooked in appearance as the gnarled
branches of the trees they ministered to. And there were dainty ryls
from the fields, each one bearing the emblem of the flower or plant it
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: will rhetoric teach us to persuade or advise the state?
Gorgias illustrates the nature of rhetoric by adducing the example of
Themistocles, who persuaded the Athenians to build their docks and walls,
and of Pericles, whom Socrates himself has heard speaking about the middle
wall of the Piraeus. He adds that he has exercised a similar power over
the patients of his brother Herodicus. He could be chosen a physician by
the assembly if he pleased, for no physician could compete with a
rhetorician in popularity and influence. He could persuade the multitude
of anything by the power of his rhetoric; not that the rhetorician ought to
abuse this power any more than a boxer should abuse the art of self-
defence. Rhetoric is a good thing, but, like all good things, may be
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