| 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: a life of slavery, which we dreaded far more than
sudden death.
We felt as though we had come into deep waters
and were about being overwhelmed, and that the
slightest mistake would clip asunder the last brittle
thread of hope by which we were suspended, and
let us down for ever into the dark and horrible
pit of misery and degradation from which we were
straining every nerve to escape. While our hearts
were crying lustily unto Him who is ever ready and
able to save, the conductor of the train that we had
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: pulling up an oak. Thus, as the Judge required an impossibility of
Clifford, the latter, as he could not perform it, must needs perish.
For what, in the grasp of a man like this, was to become of Clifford's
soft poetic nature, that never should have had a task more stubborn
than to set a life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and rhythm of
musical cadences! Indeed, what had become of it already? Broken!
Blighted! All but annihilated! Soon to be wholly so!
For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah's mind, whether
Clifford might not really have such knowledge of their deceased
uncle's vanished estate as the Judge imputed to him. She remembered
some vague intimations, on her brother's part, which--if the
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: from us; I only let him see that I was conscious of what I owed
him. He was as mild as contrition and as copious as faith; he was
never so fine as on a shy return, and even better at forgiving than
at being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter than that
famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the problematical sobriety
and of Miss Anvoy's initiation; but I was as much in it on this
occasion as I had been out of it then. At about 1.30 he was
sublime.
He never, in whatever situation, rose till all other risings were
over, and his breakfasts, at Wimbledon, had always been the
principal reason mentioned by departing cooks. The coast was
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