| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: are, however, improving; they are willing to labour, and a
short time since a party went on a sealing-voyage, and behaved
very well. They were now enjoying the fruits of their
labour, by being dressed in very gay, clean clothes, and by
being very idle. The taste they showed in their dress was
admirable; if you could have turned one of these young
Indians into a statue of bronze, his drapery would have been
perfectly graceful.
One day I rode to a large salt-lake, or Salina, which is
distant fifteen miles from the town. During the winter it
consists of a shallow lake of brine, which in summer is
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: now, for the first time in my life, a field hand. In
my new employment, I found myself even more
awkward than a country boy appeared to be in a
large city. I had been at my new home but one
week before Mr. Covey gave me a very severe whip-
ping, cutting my back, causing the blood to run,
and raising ridges on my flesh as large as my little finger.
The details of this affair are as follows: Mr. Covey
sent me, very early in the morning of one of our
coldest days in the month of January, to the woods,
to get a load of wood. He gave me a team of un-
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: millinery, and hope thereby to acquire our manners. You will have
a success, and in Paris success is everything; it is the key of
power. If the women credit you with wit and talent, the men will
follow suit so long as you do not undeceive them yourself. There
will be nothing you may not aspire to; you will go everywhere,
and you will find out what the world is--an assemblage of fools
and knaves. But you must be neither the one nor the other. I am
giving you my name like Ariadne's clue of thread to take with you
into the labyrinth; make no unworthy use of it," she said, with a
queenly glance and curve of her throat; "give it back to me
unsullied. And now, go; leave me. We women also have our battles
Father Goriot |
