| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: than for the worn-out, sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil,
the general dilapidation of its farms and fences, the indigent
and spiritless character of its inhabitants, and the prevalence
of ague and fever.
The name of this singularly unpromising and truly famine stricken
district is Tuckahoe, a name well known to all Marylanders, black
and white. It was given to this section of country probably, at
the first, merely in derision; or it may possibly have been
applied to it, as I have heard, because some one of its earlier
inhabitants had been guilty of the petty meanness of stealing a
hoe--or taking a hoe that did not belong to him. Eastern Shore
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Psychology of Revolution by Gustave le Bon: that which followed the Ordinances of Charles X. This monarch
was, as we know, overthrown in four days. His minister
Polignac had taken no measures of defence, and the king was so
confident of the tranquillity of Paris that he had gone hunting.
The army was not in the least hostile, as in the reign of Louis
XVI., but the troops, badly officered, disbanded before the
attacks of a few insurgents.
The overthrow of Louis-Philippe was still more typical, since it
did not result from any arbitrary action on the part of the
sovereign. This monarch was not surrounded by the hatred which
finally surrounded Charles X., and his fall was the result of an
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: ways at once all the time. He crept into one of
these boxes and laid down there in the clothes in
which he had left his home many days before, keep-
ing his bundle and his stick by his side. People
groaned, children cried, water dripped, the lights
went out, the walls of the place creaked, and every-
thing was being shaken so that in one's little box
one dared not lift one's head. He had lost touch
with his only companion (a young man from the
same valley, he said), and all the time a great noise
of wind went on outside and heavy blows fell--
Amy Foster |
