| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Adieu by Honore de Balzac: To these questions and several others which the two friends
alternately addressed to her, she answered only with guttural sounds
that seemed more like the growl of an animal than the voice of a human
being.
"She must be deaf and dumb," said the marquis.
"Bons-Hommes!" cried the peasant woman.
"Ah! I see. This is, no doubt, the old monastery of the Bons-Hommes,"
said the marquis.
He renewed his questions. But, like a capricious child, the peasant
woman colored, played with her wooden shoe, twisted the rope of the
cow, which was now feeding peaceably, and looked at the two hunters,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight,
and drag the woman Wolfe off with them; but, being pacified, she
staggered away.
Deborah groped her way into the cellar, and, after considerable
stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip, that sent
a yellow glimmer over the room. It was low, damp,--the earthen
floor covered with a green, slimy moss,--a fetid air smothering
the breath. Old Wolfe lay asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in
a torn horse-blanket. He was a pale, meek little man, with a
white face and red rabbit-eyes. The woman Deborah was like him;
only her face was even more ghastly, her lips bluer, her eyes
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: and yet a perfect stranger to every one. I was without home,
without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work,
and without any definite knowledge as to what course to take,
or where to look for succor. In such an extremity, a man had something
besides his new-born freedom to think of. While wandering about the streets
of New York, and lodging at least one night among the barrels on one
of the wharves, I was indeed free--from slavery, but free from
food and shelter as well. I kept my secret to myself as long as I could,
but I was compelled at last to seek some one who would befriend me without
taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such a person I found
in a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who, from his
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