| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: the papers of his black passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama.
My whole future depended upon the decision of this conductor.
Agitated though I was while this ceremony was proceeding, still,
externally, at least, I was apparently calm and self-possessed.
He went on with his duty--examining several colored passengers
before reaching me. He was somewhat harsh in tome and peremptory
in manner until he reached me, when, strange enough, and to my surprise
and relief, his whole manner changed. Seeing that I did not readily
produce my free papers, as the other colored persons in the car had done,
he said to me, in friendly contrast with his bearing toward the others:
"I suppose you have your free papers?"
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: voyage to the wreck.
CHAPTER XII.
THE "NORAH CREINA."
I love to recall the glad monotony of a Pacific voyage, when the
trades are not stinted, and the ship, day after day, goes free.
The mountain scenery of trade-wind clouds, watched (and in
my case painted) under every vicissitude of light--blotting stars,
withering in the moon's glory, barring the scarlet eve, lying
across the dawn collapsed into the unfeatured morning bank, or
at noon raising their snowy summits between the blue roof of
heaven and the blue floor of sea; the small, busy, and deliberate
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: singing together, as if to tell the lost but not forgotten lover
that their spirits now could only meet in heaven. Pathetic hope!
Then followed the Amen. No more Joy, no more tears in the air,
no sadness, no regrets. The Amen was the return to God. The
final chord was deep, solemn, even terrible; for the last
rumblings of the bass sent a shiver through the audience that
raised the hair on their heads; the nun shook out her veiling of
crepe, and seemed to sink again into the grave from which she had
risen for a moment. Slowly the reverberations died away; it
seemed as if the church, but now so full of light, had returned
to thick darkness.
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