| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French
for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ
me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon
reaching the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work,
I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her
unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her.
This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking
and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me.
Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit
lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my trade I could have
earned two dollars a day, but as a common laborer I received but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: was directed of course against the swindling practices of the
boarding-house crimps. It had never struck me it would apply to
everybody alike no matter what the motive, because I believed then
that people on shore did their work with care and foresight.
"I was confounded at the idea, but Mr. Powell made me soon see that
an Act of Parliament hasn't any sense of its own. It has only the
sense that's put into it; and that's precious little sometimes. He
didn't mind helping a young man to a ship now and then, he said, but
if we kept on coming constantly it would soon get about that he was
doing it for money.
"A pretty thing that would be: the Senior Shipping-Master of the
Chance |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: Instead of basing his expenses, as Frenchmen do, upon his revenues, he
followed the old Dutch custom of spending only a fourth of his income.
Twelve hundred ducats a year put his costs of living at a level with
those of the richest men of the place. The promulgation of the Civil
Code proved the wisdom of this course. Compelling, as it did, the
equal division of property, the Title of Succession would some day
leave each child with limited means, and disperse the treasures of the
Claes collection. Balthazar, therefore, in concert with Madame Claes,
invested his wife's property so as to secure to each child a fortune
eventually equal to his own. The house of Claes still maintained its
moderate scale of living, and bought woodlands somewhat the worse for
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