| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Contrast by Royall Tyler: with your city ladies, give me the twenty acres of rock,
the Bible, the cow, and Tabitha, and a little peaceable
bundling.
SCENE II. The Mall.
Enter MANLY.
It must be so, Montague! and it is not all the tribe
of Mandevilles that shall convince me that a nation,
to become great, must first become dissipated. Lux-
ury is surely the bane of a nation: Luxury! which
enervates both soul and body, by opening a thousand
new sources of enjoyment, opens, also, a thousand new
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: had laid himself down on the ground to wait till the boat should
start, and had slept till the sound of the horn awakened him. Was he a
thief? or some one belonging to the custom-house or the police?
As soon as the man appeared on the jetty to which the boat was moored,
seven persons who were standing in the stern of the shallop hastened
to sit down on the benches, so as to leave no room for the newcomer.
It was the swift and instinctive working of the aristocratic spirit,
an impulse of exclusiveness that comes from the rich man's heart. Four
of the seven personages belonged to the most aristocratic families in
Flanders. First among them was a young knight with two beautiful
greyhounds; his long hair flowed from beneath a jeweled cap; he
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: "Do you never repent, yourself?" asked Santa Claus, curiously.
"Oh, yes, indeed," answered the Daemon. "I am even now repenting that
I assisted in your capture. Of course it is too late to remedy the
evil that has been done; but repentance, you know, can come only after
an evil thought or deed, for in the beginning there is nothing to
repent of."
"So I understand," said Santa Claus. "Those who avoid evil need never
visit your cave."
"As a rule, that is true," replied the Daemon; "yet you, who have done
no evil, are about to visit my cave at once; for to prove that I sincerely
regret my share in your capture I am going to permit you to escape."
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
