| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: very best advice in Philadelphia. Which turned
out to be quite correct, though he did not receive
it from physicians, but from kind abolitionists who
understood his case much better. The gentleman
also said, "I reckon your master's father hasn't any
more such faithful and smart boys as you." "O,
yes, sir, he has," I replied, "lots on 'em." Which
was literally true. This seemed all he wished to
know. He thanked me, gave me a ten-cent piece,
and requested me to be attentive to my good
master. I promised that I would do so, and have
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: Nature herself bids all her creatures love. Did the lost illusions of
her girlhood return to her? Did the woman suffer from an inward
comparison? I fancied I perceived a desolation in her attitude that
was favorable to my first appeal, and I said, "Some days are hard to
bear."
"You read my soul," she answered; "but how have you done so?"
"We touch at many points," I replied. "Surely we belong to the small
number of human beings born to the highest joys and the deepest
sorrows; whose feeling qualities vibrate in unison and echo each other
inwardly; whose sensitive natures are in harmony with the principle of
things. Put such beings among surroundings where all is discord and
The Lily of the Valley |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is proved in the
furnace, that we may discover whether they are armed against all
enchantments, and of a noble bearing always, good guardians of themselves
and of the music which they have learned, and retaining under all
circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as will be most
serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he who at every age,
as boy and youth and in mature life, has come out of the trial victorious
and pure, shall be appointed a ruler and guardian of the State; he shall be
honoured in life and death, and shall receive sepulture and other memorials
of honour, the greatest that we have to give. But him who fails, we must
reject. I am inclined to think that this is the sort of way in which our
The Republic |
