| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: matches his school-implanted prejudice, just as it has rejected every fact
that does not match it. There is absolutely no other way to explain the
American habit of speaking ill of England and well of France. Several
times in the past, France has been flagrantly hostile to us. But there was
Lafayette, there was Rochambeau, and the great service France did us then
against England. Hence from our school histories we have a pro-French
complex. Under its workings we automatically remember every good turn
France has done us and automatically forget the evil turns. Again try the
experiment yourself. How many Americans do you think that you will find
who can recall, or who even know when you recall to them the insolent
and meddlesome Citizen Genet, envoy of the French Republic, and how
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: goods, the Spaniards caused all the goods to be burned, and punished
the men with death who were concerned in carrying them on shore.
This, I believe, was in part true, though I do not affirm it; but it is not
at all unlikely, seeing the danger was really very great, the infection
being so violent in London.
I heard likewise that the plague was carried into those countries by
some of our ships, and particularly to the port of Faro in the kingdom
of Algarve, belonging to the King of Portugal, and that several persons
died of it there; but it was not confirmed.
On the other hand, though the Spaniards and Portuguese were so shy
of us, it is most certain that the plague (as has been said) keeping at
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: up he calls the bold Captain Richards, the commander of his
consort the Revenge sloop, and bids him take Mr. Marks (one of
his prisoners), and go up to Charleston and get the medicine.
There was no task that suited our Captain Richards better than
that. Up to the town he rowed, as bold as brass. "Look ye," says
he to the governor, rolling his quid of tobacco from one cheek to
another--"look ye, we're after this and that, and if we don't get
it, why, I'll tell you plain, we'll burn them bloody crafts of
yours that we've took over yonder, and cut the weasand of every
clodpoll aboard of 'em."
There was no answering an argument of such force as this, and the
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
