| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: 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
whole people.
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: "Ruth doesn't insist on that," said Mrs. Mulville; "and it's, for
her, exactly this technical weakness that constitutes the force of
the moral obligation."
"Are you repeating her words?" I enquired. I forget what else
Adelaide said, but she said she was magnificent. I thought of
George Gravener confronted with such magnificence as that, and I
asked what could have made two such persons ever suppose they
understood each other. Mrs. Mulville assured me the girl loved him
as such a woman could love and that she suffered as such a woman
could suffer. Nevertheless she wanted to see ME. At this I sprang
up with a groan. "Oh I'm so sorry!--when?" Small though her sense
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: it would suddenly vanish, at some wave of an enchanter's wand, as it
must have arisen also. The library is by far the finest room I ever
saw. Its windows and arches and doorways are all of a fine carved
Gothic open work as light as gossamer. One door which he lately
added cost a thousand pounds, the door alone, not the doorway, so
you can judge of the exquisite workmanship. Here Lady Breadalbane
joined us, whom I had never before met. . . . During dinner the
piper in full costume was playing the pibroch in a gallery outside
the window, and after he had done a band, also in full Highland
dress, played some of the Italian, German as well as Scotch music,
at just an agreeable distance. I have seen nothing in England which
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