| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: self-government that is despotism;" and also to give utterance
to its twin truth: "He who would be no slave must consent to have
no slave."
Lincoln was born in the slave State of Kentucky. He lived there
only a short time, and we have reason to believe that wherever he
might have grown up, his very nature would have spurned the
doctrine and practice of human slavery. Yet, though he hated
slavery, he never hated the slave-holder. His feeling of pardon
and sympathy for Kentucky and the South played no unimportant
part in his dealings with grave problems of statesmanship. It is
true that he struck slavery its death blow with the hand of war,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: Almayer.
They could not understand this. Reshid thought that it was very
strange. He felt uneasy and doubtful. But Abdulla, after the
first shock of surprise, with the old age's dislike for solving
riddles, showed a becoming resignation. He remarked that the man
was dead now at all events, and consequently no more dangerous.
Where was the use to wonder at the decrees of Fate, especially if
they were propitious to the True Believers? And with a pious
ejaculation to Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, Abdulla
seemed to regard the incident as closed for the present.
Not so Reshid. He lingered by his uncle, pulling thoughtfully
Almayer's Folly |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: road--follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it
will lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely,
and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean
field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour I
can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man
does not stand from one year's end to another, and there,
consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the
cigar-smoke of a man.
The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of
expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of
which roads are the arms and legs--a trivial or quadrivial place,
Walking |
