| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: young Amyas with him and set forth in glowing colors the purpose of
his voyage, he found Sir Richard utterly unwilling to help him with
his suit.
"Heyday, Sir Richard! You are not surely gone over to the side of
those canting fellows (Spanish Jesuits in disguise, every one of
them, they are), who pretended to turn up their noses at Franky
Drake, as a pirate, and be hanged to them?"
"My friend Oxenham," answered he, in the sententious and measured
style of the day, "I have always held, as you should know by this,
that Mr. Drake's booty, as well as my good friend Captain
Hawkins's, is lawful prize, as being taken from the Spaniard, who
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at
my beck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of
giving joy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and
fill my hands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect
makes no mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap
up their gold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women
and ever new faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could
gamble on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible;
but a man who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth
need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand
that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: at once, but I could not see how Elm Street church, in New
Bedford, could be regarded as sanctioning the Christianity of
these characters in the church at St. Michael's. I therefore
resolved to join the Methodist church in New Bedford, and to
enjoy the spiritual advantage of public worship. The minister of
the Elm Street Methodist church, was the Rev. Mr. Bonney; and
although I was not allowed a seat in the body of the house, and
was proscribed on account of my color, regarding this
proscription simply as an accommodation of the uncoverted
congregation who had not yet been won to Christ and his
brotherhood, I was willing thus to be proscribed, lest sinners
 My Bondage and My Freedom |