| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: ask mercy for this one? It is Castelnau, who, they say, received your
word of honor that he should be courteously treated if he
surrendered."
"Do you think I waited till he was here before trying to save him?"
said the Duc de Nemours, stung by the stern reproach.
The clerk called slowly--no doubt he was intentionally slow:--
"Michel-Jean-Louis, Baron de Castelnau-Chalosse, accused and convicted
of the crime of /lese-majeste/, and of attempts against the person of
the king."
"No," said Castelnau, proudly, "it cannot be a crime to oppose the
tyranny and the projected usurpation of the Guises."
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: ears she recited the whole length and breadth of her woes.
"I bringed 'er up deh way a dauter oughta be bringed up an'
dis is how she served me! She went teh deh devil deh first chance
she got! May Gawd forgive her."
When arrested for drunkenness she used the story of her
daughter's downfall with telling effect upon the police justices.
Finally one of them said to her, peering down over his spectacles:
"Mary, the records of this and other courts show that you are the
mother of forty-two daughters who have been ruined. The case
is unparalleled in the annals of this court, and this court
thinks--"
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: in these earliest years of my freedom.
Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford
three and forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from
race and color prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches,
Rodmans, Arnolds, Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all
classes of its people. The test of the real civilization of the
community came when I applied for work at my trade, and then my
repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so happened that Mr. Rodney
French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen, distinguished as an
anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a whaling voyage,
upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering to be
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