| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children
of my own, who should I look to in any little matter I
may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sisters?--
and I am sure Mr. Norris is too just--but you know I am
a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us
be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl
an education, and introduce her properly into the world,
and ten to one but she has the means of settling well,
without farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours,
Sir Thomas, I may say, or at least of_yours_, would not
grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages.
Mansfield Park |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: escaped a worse than lion's jaws. I was absent from
Baltimore, for the purpose of valuation and division,
just about one month, and it seemed to have been
six.
Very soon after my return to Baltimore, my mis-
tress, Lucretia, died, leaving her husband and one
child, Amanda; and in a very short time after her
death, Master Andrew died. Now all the property
of my old master, slaves included, was in the hands
of strangers,--strangers who had had nothing to do
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and
feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the
quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning
for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation.
Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and
other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood
ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close,
and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth
by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of
the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked
strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic
Mosses From An Old Manse |
