| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: have luck. That is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight
times as many in New York--say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health
of the two places is the same. So we will let it stand as a fair
presumption that this will hold good all over the country, and that
consequently 25,000 out of every million of people we have must die
every year. That amounts to one-fortieth of our total population.
One million of us, then, die annually. Out of this million ten
or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot, drowned, hanged, poisoned,
or meet a similarly violent death in some other popular way,
such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt conflagrations,
getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops, breaking
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: It was the atmosphere for sentiment, and I began upon my gratitude.
"If I may say it," said I, after a time, "you have saved my life."
"Chance," he answered. "Just chance."
"I prefer to make my thanks to the accessible agent."
"Thank no one. You had the need, and I had the knowledge;
and I injected and fed you much as I might have collected a specimen.
I was bored and wanted something to do. If I'd been jaded that day,
or hadn't liked your face, well--it's a curious question where you would
have been now!"
This damped my mood a little. "At any rate," I began.
"It's chance, I tell you," he interrupted, "as everything is in
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: or some similar purpose, I offer them the following extracts
or that wise observer on governments DRAGONETTI.
"The science" says he "of the politician consists
in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom.
Those men would deserve the gratitude of ages,
who should discover a mode of government that contained
the greatest sum of individual happiness, with the least
national expense. [Dragonetti on virtue and rewards]
But where, says some, is the King of America? I'll tell you.
Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind
like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear
Common Sense |
