| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: to help me; and, in fact, he seemed while speaking to me to fear lest
I myself might be a spy and a betrayer. Under this apprehension,
as I suppose, he showed signs of wishing to be rid of me,
and with whitewash brush in hand, in search of work, he soon disappeared.
This picture, given by poor "Jake," of New York, was a damper
to my enthusiasm. My little store of money would soon be exhausted,
and since it would be unsafe for me to go on the wharves for work,
and I had no introductions elsewhere, the prospect for me was far from
cheerful. I saw the wisdom of keeping away from the ship-yards,
for, if pursued, as I felt certain I should be, Mr. Auld, my "master,"
would naturally seek me there among the calkers. Every door seemed closed
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: delights. Existence itself is but the unceasing accomplishment of
an unchanging desire; the soul is but the vestal charged to feed
the sacred fire of love.
We often went at night-time to sit in the little wood above the
house; there we listened to the cheerful harmonies of evening,
both of us thinking of the coming hours which should leave us to
one another till the dawn of day. At other times we did not get
up all day; we did not even let the sunlight enter our room.
The curtains were hermetically closed, and for a moment the
external world did not exist for us. Nanine alone had the right
to open our door, but only to bring in our meals and even these
Camille |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: she had spent a week with dear Mrs. Floyd-Taylor: this accounted
for the effusiveness of her reunion with dear Mrs. Meldrum. Her
black garments were of the freshest and daintiest; she suggested a
pink-and-white wreath at a showy funeral. She confounded us for
three minutes with her presence; she was a beauty of the great
conscious public responsible order. The young men, her companions,
gazed at her and grinned: I could see there were very few moments
of the day at which young men, these or others, would not be so
occupied. The people who approached took leave of their manners;
every one seemed to linger and gape. When she brought her face
close to Mrs. Meldrum's--and she appeared to be always bringing it
|
