| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: seen him, for everybody had seen him in some circus or other, or
even in traveling shows, performing the trick that consists of
putting a man or woman with extended arms against a wooden
target, and in throwing knives between their fingers and round
their heads, from a distance. There is nothing very extraordinary
in it, after all, when one knows THE TRICKS OF THE TRADE, and
that the knives are not the least sharp, and stick into the wood
at some distance from the flesh. It is the rapidity of the
throws, the glitter of the blades, and the curve which the
handles make toward their living object, which give an air of
danger to an exhibition that has become commonplace, and only
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: the whip-driven slave on the plantation. Slavery dislikes a
dense population, in which there is a majority of non-
slaveholders. The general sense of decency that must pervade
such a population, does much to check and prevent those outbreaks
of atrocious cruelty, and those dark crimes without a name,
almost openly perpetrated on the plantation. He is a desperate
slaveholder who will shock the humanity of his non-slaveholding
neighbors, by the cries of the lacerated slaves; and very few in
the city are willing to incur the odium of being cruel masters.
I found, in Baltimore, that no man was more odious to the white,
as well as to the colored people, than he, who had the reputation
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Recruit by Honore de Balzac: there that nothing might be lacking; the comforts of his home should
reveal to him without words the tenderness of his mother!
"Brigitte!" said the countess, in a heart-rending tone, placing a
chair before the table, as if to give a semblance of reality to her
hopes, and so increase the strength of her illusions.
"Ah! madame, he will come. He is not far off. I haven't a doubt he is
living, and on his way," replied Brigitte. "I put a key in the Bible,
and I held it on my fingers while Cottin read a chapter in the gospel
of Saint John; and, madame, the key never turned at all!"
"Is that a good sign?" asked the countess.
"Oh! madame, that's a well-known sign. I would wager my salvation, he
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