| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: Before we got to wanting wealth and costly luxuries;
Perhaps the world was happier then, I'm not the one to say,
But when it's zero weather I am glad I live to-day.
Old-fashioned winters I recall--the winters of my youth--
I have no great desire for them to-day, I say in truth;
The frost upon the window panes was beautiful to see,
But the chill upon that bedroom floor was not a joy to me.
I do not now recall that it was fun in those days when
I woke to learn the water pipes were frozen tight "again."
To win once more the old-time joys, I don't believe I'd care
To have to sleep, for comfort's sake, dressed in my underwear.
 Just Folks |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: period which immediately precedes an election and the moment of
its duration must always be considered as a national crisis,
which is perilous in proportion to the internal embarrassments
and the external dangers of the country. Few of the nations of
Europe could escape the calamities of anarchy or of conquest
every time they might have to elect a new sovereign. In America
society is so constituted that it can stand without assistance
upon its own basis; nothing is to be feared from the pressure of
external dangers, and the election of the President is a cause of
agitation, but not of ruin.
Mode Of Election
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: She seemed to have come up to this radiant and wise and
marvellously talented womanhood of hers, to their minds,
quite spontaneously. There had been a little Celia--
a red-headed, sulky, mutinous slip of a girl, always at war
with her step-mother, and affording no special comfort
or hope to the rest of the family. Then there was a
long gap, during which the father, four times a year,
handed Michael a letter he had received from the superioress
of a distant convent, referring with cold formality
to the studies and discipline by which Miss Madden
might profit more if she had been better brought up,
 The Damnation of Theron Ware |