| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Britain by Washington Irving: sword, Majesty itself is not safe!
Under the protection of this mighty potentate, therefore, the
good people of Little Britain sleep in peace. Temple Bar is an
effectual barrier against all interior foes; and as to foreign
invasion, the Lord Mayor has but to throw himself into the
Tower, call in the trainbands, and put the standing army of
Beef-eaters under arms, and he may bid defiance to the world!
Thus wrapped up in its own concerns, its own habits, and its
own opinions, Little Britain has long flourished as a sound
heart to this great fungous metropolis. I have pleased myself
with considering it as a chosen spot, where the principles of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: epoch. May he not, in some conceivable order of things, be destined to
mark for coming philosophers the great transition which welds a period
of material enterprise to the period of intellectual strength? Our
century will bind the realm of isolated power, abounding as it does in
creative genius, to the realm of universal but levelling might;
equalizing all products, spreading them broadcast among the masses,
and being itself controlled by the principle of unity,--the final
expression of all societies. Do we not find the dead level of
barbarism succeeding the saturnalia of popular thought and the last
struggles of those civilizations which accumulated the treasures of
the world in one direction?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: their cat on the sidewalk, instructed the caretaker not
to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed
away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray alone
the shade -- Amaryllis not being in their class. If
a subscriber to the Toadies' Magazine, you have
often -- You say you are not? Well, you buy it at a
news-stand, thinking that the newsdealer is not wise to
you. But he knows about it all. HE knows -- HE
knows! I say that you have often seen in the Toadies'
Magazine pictures of the Van Plushvelts' summer home;
so it will not be described here. Our business is with
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