| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: a number of slave children that might have been
sent from the plantation to Baltimore. There were
those younger, those older, and those of the same
age. I was chosen from among them all, and was
the first, last, and only choice.
I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotisti-
cal, in regarding this event as a special interposition
of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be
false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I sup-
pressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself,
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: destitute.
Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind; she indulges
herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a
cashier.
Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of
bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a
thousand crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque,
hold these rare products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem
that they confine them in cages in their counting-houses, much as
governments procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their
own charges.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: To her astonishment Clym lay precisely as Wildeve and herself
had left him, his sleep apparently unbroken. He had been
disturbed and made to dream and murmur by the knocking,
but he had not awakened. Eustacia hastened to the door,
and in spite of her reluctance to open it to a woman who had
spoken of her so bitterly, she unfastened it and looked out.
Nobody was to be seen. There, by the scraper, lay Clym's
hook and the handful of faggot-bonds he had brought home;
in front of her were the empty path, the garden gate standing
slightly ajar; and, beyond, the great valley of purple
heath thrilling silently in the sun. Mrs. Yeobright
Return of the Native |
