| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: well as impressive things in reply to his master--
things which had the desired though unexpected ef-
fect; for the conversation resulted in the voluntary
emancipation of the slave on the part of the master.
In the same book, I met with one of Sheridan's
mighty speeches on and in behalf of Catholic eman-
cipation. These were choice documents to me. I read
them over and over again with unabated interest.
They gave tongue to interesting thoughts of my own
soul, which had frequently flashed through my mind,
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: a stream, spread into a flood, became a torrent that
inundated the streets, the sidewalks, filling every nook and
crevice, a moving mass. Ten thousand people! A city!
Fanny found herself shaking with excitement, and something
like terror at the immensity of it. She tried to get a
picture of it, a sketch, with the gleaming windows of the
red brick buildings as a background. Amazingly enough, she
succeeded in doing it. That was because she tried for broad
effects, and relied on one bit of detail for her story. It
was the face of a girl--a very tired and tawdry girl, of
sixteen, perhaps. On her face the look that the day's work
Fanny Herself |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: the kitchen, wood-house, and laundry.
One side of the porte-cochere, being left open, allowed the passers in
the street to see in the midst of the vast courtyard a flower-bed, the
raised earth of which was held in place by a low privet hedge. A few
monthly roses, pinkes, lilies, and Spanish broom filled this bed,
around which in the summer season boxes of paurestinus, pomegranates,
and myrtle were placed. Struck by the scrupulous cleanliness of the
courtyard and its dependencies, a stranger would at once have divined
that the place belonged to an old maid. The eye which presided there
must have been an unoccupied, ferreting eye; minutely careful, less
from nature than for want of something to do. An old maid, forced to
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