| 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: me a number of severe whippings, all to no good
purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to
be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one
year to a man named Edward Covey. Mr. Covey
was a poor man, a farm-renter. He rented the place
upon which he lived, as also the hands with which
he tilled it. Mr. Covey had acquired a very high
reputation for breaking young slaves, and this repu-
tation was of immense value to him. It enabled him
to get his farm tilled with much less expense to
himself than he could have had it done without
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 The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: will sleep in my berth. Well, I'm not ashamed of the brig. By
heavens--no! I shall keep away: never come near them as I've
promised. Now there's nothing more to say. I've told her
everything at once. There's nothing more."
He felt a heaviness in his burning breast, in all his limbs as if
the blood in his veins had become molten lead.
"I shall get the yacht off. Three, four days--no, a week."
He found he couldn't do it under a week. It occurred to him he
would see her every day till the yacht was afloat. No, he
wouldn't intrude, but he was master and owner of the brig after
all. He didn't mean to skulk like a whipped cur about his own
The Rescue |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: his bodily infirmities reached a point when the task of laying
him in bed became as difficult as the navigation of a felucca in
the perils of an intricate channel. Then came the day of his
death; and this brilliant sceptic, whose mental faculties alone
had survived the most dreadful of all destructions, found himself
between his two special antipathies--the doctor and the
confessor. But he was jovial with them. Did he not see a light
gleaming in the future beyond the veil? The pall that is like
lead for other men was thin and translucent for him; the light-
footed, irresistible delights of youth danced beyond it like
shadows.
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