| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: and towards half-past twelve it reached the northwest border
of the Great Salt Lake. Thence the passengers could observe
the vast extent of this interior sea, which is also called the Dead Sea,
and into which flows an American Jordan. It is a picturesque expanse,
framed in lofty crags in large strata, encrusted with white salt--
a superb sheet of water, which was formerly of larger extent than now,
its shores having encroached with the lapse of time, and thus at once
reduced its breadth and increased its depth.
The Salt Lake, seventy miles long and thirty-five wide,
is situated three miles eight hundred feet above the sea.
Quite different from Lake Asphaltite, whose depression
 Around the World in 80 Days |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau: his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and
well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace,
and see if he can get over this obstruction to his
neighborlines without a ruder and more impetuous thought or
speech corresponding with his action. I know this well,
that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I
could name--if ten honest men only--ay, if one HONEST man,
in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were
actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked
up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of
slavery in America. For it matters not how small the
 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tour Through Eastern Counties of England by Daniel Defoe: improvement is scarce credible; also the farmers are so very
considerable and their farms and dairies so large that it is very
frequent for a farmer to have 1,000 pounds stock upon his farm in
cows only.
NORFOLK.
From High Suffolk I passed the Waveney into Norfolk, near Schole
Inn. In my passage I saw at Redgrave (the seat of the family) a
most exquisite monument of Sir John Holt, Knight, late Lord Chief
Justice of the King's Bench several years, and one of the most
eminent lawyers of his time. One of the heirs of the family is now
building a fine seat about a mile on the south side of Ipswich,
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