| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: the blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build
an estimate of her book upon, so far as I--
C. I knew her uncle. You are forgetting her uncle.
H. Oh, what use is HE? Did you know him long? How long was it?
C. Well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have
met him, anyway. I think it was that way; you can't tell about
these things, you know, except when they are recent.
H. Recent? When was all this?
C. Sixteen years ago.
H. What a basis to judge a book upon! As first you said you knew him,
and not you don't know whether you did or not.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, first
of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to
fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with
the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is
the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin at
first, as boys begin when they grumble at their school and their
schoolmasters, to lay the blame on others; to be discontented with
their circumstances--the things which stand around them; and to
cry, "Oh that I had this!" "Oh that I had that!" But by that way
no deliverance lies. That discontent only ends in revolt and
rebellion, social or political; and that, again, still in the same
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: and their peace and personal security are to be endangered.
There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension.
Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while
existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in
nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you.
I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that
"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with
the institution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have
no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge
that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had
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