| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: no viler crime than to abuse them, yet there is no greater cruelty
than to ignore them. I have complained sufficiently of what I
suffered through the process of assault, imprisonment, and compulsory
lessons that taught me nothing, which are called my schooling. But I
could say a good deal also about the things I was not taught and
should have been taught, not to mention the things I was allowed to do
which I should not have been allowed to do. I have no recollection of
being taught to read or write; so I presume I was born with both
faculties; but many people seem to have bitter recollections of being
forced reluctantly to acquire them. And though I have the uttermost
contempt for a teacher so ill mannered and incompetent as to be unable
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: your sake," turning to Charlotte, "I am glad of it; but otherwise I
see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It was
not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family. Do you
play and sing, Miss Bennet?"
"A little."
"Oh! then-- some time or other we shall be happy to hear you.
Our instrument is a capital one, probably superior to---- You
shall try it some day. Do your sisters play and sing?"
"One of them does."
"Why did not you all learn? You ought all to have learned. The
Miss Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income
Pride and Prejudice |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: explanation of--the mobocratic violence which lately disgraced
New York, and which still more recently disgraced the city of
Boston. These violent demonstrations, these outrageous invasions
of human rights, faintly indicate the presence and power of
slavery here. It is a significant fact, that while meetings for
almost any purpose under heaven may be held unmolested in the
city of Boston, that in the same city, a meeting cannot be
peaceably held for the purpose of preaching the doctrine of the
American Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created
equal." The pestiferous breath of slavery taints the whole moral
atmosphere of the north, and enervates the moral energies of the
My Bondage and My Freedom |
