| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: My duty here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and empty the flasks
in which castings were made; and at times this was hot and heavy work.
The articles produced here were mostly for ship work, and in the busy season
the foundry was in operation night and day. I have often worked two nights
and every working day of the week. My foreman, Mr. Cobb, was a good man,
and more than once protected me from abuse that one or more of the hands
was disposed to throw upon me. While in this situation I had little time
for mental improvement. Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot
enough to keep the metal running like water, was more favorable
to action than thought; yet here I often nailed a newspaper to the post
near my bellows, and read while I was performing the up and down motion
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: or your mother?
No, indeed, he replied.
But why then are they so terribly anxious to prevent you from being happy,
and doing as you like?--keeping you all day long in subjection to another,
and, in a word, doing nothing which you desire; so that you have no good,
as would appear, out of their great possessions, which are under the
control of anybody rather than of you, and have no use of your own fair
person, which is tended and taken care of by another; while you, Lysis, are
master of nobody, and can do nothing?
Why, he said, Socrates, the reason is that I am not of age.
I doubt whether that is the real reason, I said; for I should imagine that
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: bind.
Dear bride of Nature and most bounteous spring,
That canst give increase to the sweet-breath'd kine,
And to the kid its little horns, and bring
The soft and silky blossoms to the vine,
Where is that old nepenthe which of yore
Man got from poppy root and glossy-berried mandragore!
There was a time when any common bird
Could make me sing in unison, a time
When all the strings of boyish life were stirred
To quick response or more melodious rhyme
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