| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: have allowed that man to treat a horse like that.
I wanted to stop the whole thing and set the slaves
free, but that would not do. I must not interfere too
much and get myself a name for riding over the
country's laws and the citizen's rights roughshod. If
I lived and prospered I would be the death of slavery,
that I was resolved upon; but I would try to fix it so
that when I became its executioner it should be by
command of the nation.
Just here was the wayside shop of a smith; and now
arrived a landed proprietor who had bought this girl a
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: that a keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a
keeper turned inside out.
They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long, and between
their stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer,
which stood up among the ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous
trees, and as he looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on
their heads. But he was puzzled very much by a strange murmuring
noise, which followed them all the way. So much puzzled, that at
last he took courage to ask the keeper what it was.
He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for he was horribly
afraid of him, which pleased the keeper, and he told him that they
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make-
shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject
slave--a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in
which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly
endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest was now ended; my
chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy.
But my gladness was short-lived, for I was not yet out of the reach
and power of the slave-holders. I soon found that New York was not quite
so free or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness
and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the street,
a few hours after my landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once known well
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