| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: marks of admiration and enthusiasm which they lavished on him out
of fear was concealed an intense hatred. We can gather as much
by reading the reports of various deputies inserted in the
Moniteur of August 11, 15, and 29, 1794, and notably that on
``the conspiracy of the triumvirs, Robespierre, Couthon, and
Saint-Just.'' Never did slaves heap such invectives on a fallen
master.
We learn that ``these monsters had for some time been renewing
the most horrible prescriptions of Marius and Sulla.''
Robespierre is represented as a most frightful scoundrel; we are
assured that ``like Caligula, he would soon have asked the French
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Philosophy 4 by Owen Wister: evidently a painful novelty to their features. Drops of perspiration
came one by one from their matted hair, and their hands dampened the
paper upon which they wrote. The windows stood open wide to the May
darkness, but nothing came in save heat and insects; for spring, being
behind time, was making up with a sultry burst at the end, as a delayed
train makes the last few miles high above schedule speed. Thus it has
been since eight o'clock. Eleven was daintily striking now. Its
diminutive sonority might have belonged to some church-bell far distant
across the Cambridge silence; but it was on a shelf in the room,--a
timepiece of Gallic design, representing Mephistopheles, who caressed
the world in his lap. And as the little strokes boomed, eight--nine--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy: though embattled we are. . .but a call to bear the burden of a long
twilight struggle. . .year in and year out, rejoicing in hope,
patient in tribulation. . .a struggle against the common enemies of man:
tyranny. . .poverty. . .disease. . .and war itself. Can we forge against
these enemies a grand and global alliance. . .North and South. . .
East and West. . .that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind?
Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted
the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger; I do not shrink
from this responsibility. . .I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us
would exchange places with any other people or any other generation.
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