| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a
shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for
councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social
arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and
down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by
layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic
liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family
portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype,
unless I find out that the last is the better of the two.
- I should have felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had
thought the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: Granville's, who was then President of the Council and wished to see
me as soon as possible. I agreed to go with him the next morning.
Accordingly Mr. Hanbury called for me and took me in his carriage
to that nobleman's, who receiv'd me with great civility; and after
some questions respecting the present state of affairs in America
and discourse thereupon, he said to me: "You Americans have wrong
ideas of the nature of your constitution; you contend that the king's
instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves
at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion.
But those instructions are not like the pocket instructions given
to a minister going abroad, for regulating his conduct in some
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin: was offensive. I had liv'd near what was call'd the Jersey Market,
and saw with pain the inhabitants wading in mud while purchasing
their provisions. A strip of ground down the middle of that
market was at length pav'd with brick, so that, being once
in the market, they had firm footing, but were often over shoes
in dirt to get there. By talking and writing on the subject,
I was at length instrumental in getting the street pav'd with stone
between the market and the brick'd foot-pavement, that was on each
side next the houses. This, for some time, gave an easy access
to the market dry-shod; but, the rest of the street not being
pav'd, whenever a carriage came out of the mud upon this pavement,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin |
