| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are
told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish
being a prolifick dyet, there are more children born in Roman
Catholick countries about nine months after Lent, the markets
will be more glutted than usual, because the number of Popish
infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and therefore
it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the
number of Papists among us.
I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child
(in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths
of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags
A Modest Proposal |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: to know that the vessel was bound for some port where there
would be other human beings to undergo his searching scrutiny.
All in all, Ajax, as he had been dubbed, was considered the
most remarkable and intelligent ape that any one aboard the
Marjorie W. ever had seen. Nor was his intelligence the only
remarkable attribute he owned. His stature and physique were,
for an ape, awe inspiring. That he was old was quite evident,
but if his age had impaired his physical or mental powers in the
slightest it was not apparent.
And so at length the Marjorie W. came to England, and there
the officers and the scientists, filled with compassion for the
The Son of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of
nutriments and rags having been at least four times that value.
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I
hope will not be liable to the least objection.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year
old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether
stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it
will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.
I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of
the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed,
A Modest Proposal |
