| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: us, she prevented the French Emperor, Napoleon III, from recognizing the
Southern Confederacy. We shall come to this in its turn. Our Civil War
set up in England a huge vibration, subjected England to a searching test
of herself. Nothing describes this better than a letter of Henry Ward
Beecher's, written during the War, after his return from addressing the
people of England.
"My own feelings and judgment underwent a great change while I was in
England... I was chilled and shocked at the coldness towards the North
which I everywhere met, and the sympathetic prejudices in favor of the
South. And yet everybody was alike condemning slavery and praising
liberty!"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: should be overthrown for you personally. The payment of the premium is
all that is required to protect--"
"The money-box," said the lunatic, sharply interrupting him.
"Ah! naturally; yes. I see that Monsieur understands business."
"Yes," said the madman. "I established the Territorial Bank in the Rue
des Fosses-Montmartre at Paris in 1798."
"For," resumed Gaudissart, going back to his premium, "in order to
meet the payments on the intellectual capital which each man
recognizes and esteems in himself, it is of course necessary that each
should pay a certain premium, three per cent; an annual due of three
per cent. Thus, by the payment of this trifling sum, a mere nothing,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: knowledge complete: instead of going on to discover as he discovered
before them, and in following his method, show that they honour him, not
in the letter, but in spirit and in truth.
For this, if you will consider, is the true meaning of that great
command, "Honour thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the
land." On reverence for the authority of bygone generations depends the
permanence of every form of thought or belief, as much as of all social,
national, and family life: but on reverence of the spirit, not merely
of the letter; of the methods of our ancestors, not merely of their
conclusions. Ay, and we shall not be able to preserve their
conclusions, not even to understand them; they will die away on our lips
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