| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: He muttered something about the villages round that lake.
`Kurtz got the tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested.
He fidgeted a little. `They adored him,' he said. The tone of
these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly.
It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to
speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts,
swayed his emotions. `What can you expect?' he burst out;
`he came to them with thunder and lightning, you know--
and they had never seen anything like it--and very terrible.
He could be very terrible. You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would
an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now--just to give you an idea--
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: reflect deeply,--first on you, whom I do not sufficiently know;
next, on myself, of whom I knew too little. You have had the power
to stir up many of the evil thoughts which crouched in my heart,
as in all hearts; but from them something good and generous has
come forth, and I salute you with my most fervent benedictions,
just as at sea we salute the lighthouse which shows the rocks on
which we were about to perish. Here is my confession, for I would
not lose your esteem nor my own for all the treasures of earth.
I wished to know who you are. I have just returned from Havre,
where I saw Francoise Cochet, and followed her to Ingouville. You
are as beautiful as the woman of a poet's dream; but I do not know
Modeste Mignon |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: and "if ordered to take human life, in the name of
God to take it;" and he concludes by admonishing
the fugitives to "hearken to the Word of God, and
to count their own masters worthy of all honour."
The Rev. William Crowell, of Waterfield, State
of Maine, printed a Thanksgiving Sermon of the
same kind, in which he calls upon his hearers not
to allow "excessive sympathies for a few hundred
fugitives to blind them so that they may risk
increased suffering to the millions already in
chains."
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
