| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly over-run, being
the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most
dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design
to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their
advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have
chosen rather to leave their country, than stay at home and pay
tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.
Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of
their own, which by law may be made liable to a distress, and
help to pay their landlord's rent, their corn and cattle being
already seized, and money a thing unknown.
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare: SCENE 3. Paris. The KING'S palace.
[Enter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES.]
LAFEU.
They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical
persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and
causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors,
ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit
ourselves to an unknown fear.
PAROLLES.
Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our
latter times.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances,
used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished,
and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that
no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to.
They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it--
he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones
Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand--
so it generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder.
The helmsman used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong,
but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, "No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm,"
had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words "and the Man at the
The Hunting of the Snark |
