| 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: him for my week's time. This failure was occasioned
by my attending a camp meeting about ten miles
from Baltimore. During the week, I had entered
into an engagement with a number of young friends
to start from Baltimore to the camp ground early
Saturday evening; and being detained by my em-
ployer, I was unable to get down to Master Hugh's
without disappointing the company. I knew that
Master Hugh was in no special need of the money
that night. I therefore decided to go to camp meet-
ing, and upon my return pay him the three dollars.
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 The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: a furnace of my own. I saw no chance in Sharon. Furnaces passed
from father to son, so I could not hope to get one of the
furnaces controlled by another family. My father was not ready to
relinquish his furnace to me, as he was good for twenty years
more of this vigorous labor.
I wanted to be a real boss puddler, and so, when I was eighteen
I went to Pittsburgh and got a furnace. But a new period of hard
times was setting in, jobs were getting scarce as they had been
in 1884. That was the year when we had no money in the house and
I was chasing every loose nickel in town. The mill at Sharon was
down, and father was hunting work in Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: away about the holes. It would be impossible to give an idea of
the old, rotten, shaky, cranky, worm-eaten, halt, maimed, one-
eyed, rickety, and ramshackle condition of the furniture without
an exhaustive description, which would delay the progress of the
story to an extent that impatient people would not pardon. The
red tiles of the floor are full of depressions brought about by
scouring and periodical renewings of color. In short, there is no
illusory grace left to the poverty that reigns here; it is dire,
parsimonious, concentrated, threadbare poverty; as yet it has not
sunk into the mire, it is only splashed by it, and though not in
rags as yet, its clothing is ready to drop to pieces.
Father Goriot |
