| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: were all right. So I ordered a fly to the door, had
the luggage placed on; we got in, and drove down
to the Custom-house Office, which was near the
wharf where we had to obtain tickets, to take a
steamer for Wilmington, North Carolina. When
we reached the building, I helped my master into
the office, which was crowded with passengers.
He asked for a ticket for himself and one for
his slave to Philadelphia. This caused the prin-
cipal officer--a very mean-looking, cheese-coloured
fellow, who was sitting there--to look up at us very
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: to the fortunes of all parties. On the death of Mademoiselle Laguerre,
Jenny, the steward's eldest daughter was asked in marriage by
Leclercq. Gaubertin expected at that time to become owner of Les
Aigues by means of a plot laid in the private office of Lupin, the
notary, whom the steward had set up and maintained in business within
the last twelve years.
Lupin, a son of the former steward of the estate of Soulanges, had
lent himself to various slight peculations,--investments at fifty per
cent below par, notices published surreptitiously, and all the other
manoeuvres, unhappily common in the provinces, to wrap a mantle, as
the saying is, over the clandestine manipulations of property. Lately
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: eyes, seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now
not the slightest interest for him. It even struck him as strange
that they should be so eager to talk of what was of no use to any
one. Kitty, too, should, one would have supposed, have been
interested in what they were saying of the rights and education
of women. How often she had mused on the subject, thinking of her
friend abroad, Varenka, of her painful state of dependence, how
often she had wondered about herself what would become of her if
she did not marry, and how often she had argued with her sister
about it! But it did not interest her at all. She and Levin had a
conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but some sort
Anna Karenina |
