| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of
cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now
is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of
segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time
to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is
the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial
injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the
moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This
sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not
pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God,
It is that thou hast made my life too sweet
To hold the added sweetness of a song.
There is a quiet at the heart of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace
I hold my peace, my Cleïs, on my heart;
And softer than a little wild bird's wing
Are kisses that she pours upon my mouth.
Ah never any more when spring like fire
Will flicker in the newly opened leaves,
Shall I steal forth to seek for solitude
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Whirligigs by O. Henry: deputy marshal in the act of passing a counterfeit silver
dollar. He had been suspected of many such deviations
from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything
provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished
cozily in jail, smoking brown cigarettes and waiting for
trial. Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought the counterfeit
dollar and handed it to the district attorney in his office
in the court-house. The deputy and a reputable druggist
were prepared to swear that Ortiz paid for a bottle of
medicine with it. The coin was a poor counterfeit, soft,
dull-looking, and made principally of lead. It was the
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