| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: certes, much more easily attained. He has not risen by
climbing himself, but by pushing others down. He has grown
great in his own estimation, not by blowing himself out, and
risking the fate of AEsop's frog, but simply by the habitual
use of a diminishing glass on everybody else. And I think
altogether that his is a better, a safer, and a surer recipe
than most others.
After all, however, looking back on what I have written, I
detect a spirit suspiciously like his own. All through, I
have been comparing myself with our satirist, and all
through, I have had the best of the comparison. Well, well,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: aggression on the part of the slave power did not meet at the
hands of the proscribed senators the rebuke which we had a right
to expect would be administered. It seems to me that an
opportunity was lost, that the great principle of senatorial
equality was left undefended, at a time when its vindication was
sternly demanded. But it is not to the purpose of my present
statement to criticise the conduct of our friends. I am
persuaded that much ought to be left to the discretion of
<361>anti slavery men in congress, and charges of recreancy
should never be made but on the most sufficient grounds. For, of
all the places in the world where an anti-slavery man needs the
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare: [Exit HABERDASHER.]
PETRUCHIO.
Thy gown? Why, ay: come, tailor, let us see't.
O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here?
What's this? A sleeve? 'Tis like a demi-cannon.
What, up and down, carv'd like an appletart?
Here's snip and nip and cut and slish and slash,
Like to a censer in a barber's shop.
Why, what i' devil's name, tailor, call'st thou this?
HORTENSIO.
[Aside] I see she's like to have neither cap nor gown.
The Taming of the Shrew |
