| 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: Reserving, human left from human free."
MILTON.
MY wife and myself were born in different
towns in the State of Georgia, which is one of the
principal slave States. It is true, our condition as
slaves was not by any means the worst; but the
mere idea that we were held as chattels, and de-
prived of all legal rights--the thought that we
had to give up our hard earnings to a tyrant, to
enable him to live in idleness and luxury--the
thought that we could not call the bones and
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: still more if he is diseased in mind--who can say? The engineer too will
often save whole cities, and yet you despise him, and would not allow your
son to marry his daughter, or his son to marry yours. But what reason is
there in this? For if virtue only means the saving of life, whether your
own or another's, you have no right to despise him or any practiser of
saving arts. But is not virtue something different from saving and being
saved? I would have you rather consider whether you ought not to disregard
length of life, and think only how you can live best, leaving all besides
to the will of Heaven. For you must not expect to have influence either
with the Athenian Demos or with Demos the son of Pyrilampes, unless you
become like them. What do you say to this?
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs: use him, Rozales, but we must watch him. Also, my dear
captain, watch his right hand and when he slips it into his
shirt be careful that you do not draw on him--unless you
happen to be behind him."
Rozales was not inclined to take his chief's view of Byrne's
value to them. He argued that the man was guilty of disloyalty
and therefore a menace. What he thought, but did not advance
as an argument, was of a different nature. Rozales was
filled with rage to think that the newcomer had outwitted him,
and beaten him at his own game, and he was jealous, too, of
the man's ascendancy in the esteem of Pesita; but he hid his
The Mucker |
