| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: to spend the night on deck. Unjust as this regulation was,
it did not trouble us much; we had fared much harder before.
We arrived at Newport the next morning, and soon after an
old fashioned stage-coach, with "New Bedford" in large yellow letters
on its sides, came down to the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare,
and stood hesitating what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two
Quaker gentlemen who were about to take passage on the stage,--
Friends William C. Taber and Joseph Ricketson,--who at once discerned
our true situation, and, in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me,
Mr. Taber said: "Thee get in." I never obeyed an order with more alacrity,
and we were soon on our way to our new home. When we reached "Stone Bridge"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: quite alive; and cleaner, and merrier, than he ever had been. The
fairies had washed him, you see, in the swift river, so thoroughly,
that not only his dirt, but his whole husk and shell had been
washed quite off him, and the pretty little real Tom was washed out
of the inside of it, and swam away, as a caddis does when its case
of stones and silk is bored through, and away it goes on its back,
paddling to the shore, there to split its skin, and fly away as a
caperer, on four fawn-coloured wings, with long legs and horns.
They are foolish fellows, the caperers, and fly into the candle at
night, if you leave the door open. We will hope Tom will be wiser,
now he has got safe out of his sooty old shell.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: had never felt myself part of the great Royalist enterprise. I
confess that I was so indifferent to everything, so profoundly
demoralized, that having once got into that drawing-room I hadn't
the strength to get away; though I could see perfectly well my
volatile hostess going from one to another of her acquaintances in
order to tell them with a little gesture, "Look! Over there - in
that corner. That's the notorious Monsieur George." At last she
herself drove me out by coming to sit by me vivaciously and going
into ecstasies over "ce cher Monsieur Mills" and that magnificent
Lord X; and ultimately, with a perfectly odious snap in the eyes
and drop in the voice, dragging in the name of Madame de Lastaola
The Arrow of Gold |
