| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: opportunity offer, and come what will, I am off. Meanwhile, I
will try to bear up under the yoke. I am not the only slave in
the world. Why should I fret? I can bear as much as any of
them. Besides, I am but a boy, and all boys are bound to some
one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my
happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming."
I shall never be able to narrate the mental experience through
which it was my lot to pass during my stay at Covey's. I was
completely wrecked, changed and bewildered; goaded almost to
madness at one time, and at another reconciling myself to my
wretched condition. Everything in the way of kindness, which I
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: and go to work, or change your college and begin again in earnest.
You won't recover yourself while you are playing about with this
handsome Norwegian. Yes, I've seen her with you at the theatre.
She's very pretty, and perfectly irresponsible, I should judge.'
Cleric wrote my grandfather that he would like to take me East with him.
To my astonishment, grandfather replied that I might go if I wished.
I was both glad and sorry on the day when the letter came.
I stayed in my room all evening and thought things over.
I even tried to persuade myself that I was standing in Lena's way--
it is so necessary to be a little noble!--and that if she had not me
to play with, she would probably marry and secure her future.
My Antonia |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: not expressed in precisely this cut-and-dried way. Such an arrangement
consists in giving a lot of grown-up children a small pie in exchange
for a gold piece; and, like children of a smaller growth, they prefer
the pie to the gold piece, not suspecting that they might have a
couple of hundred pies for it."
"What is this all about, Bixiou?" cried Couture. "Nothing more bona
fide. Not a week passes but pies are offered to the public for a
louis. But who compels the public to take them? Are they not perfectly
free to make inquiries?"
"You would rather have it made compulsory to take up shares, would
you?" asked Blondet.
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