| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain: the markings of a block of wood that has been sawed across the
grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a glance, and at a
distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were alike.
When Wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work,
he arranged his results according to a plan in which a
progressive order and sequence was a principal feature; then he
added to the batch several pantograph enlargements which he had
made from time to time in bygone years.
The night was spent and the day well advanced now. By the
time he had snatched a trifle of breakfast, it was nine o'clock,
and the court was ready to begin its sitting. He was in his
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: pomegranates. At a second look it was her beauty of person that
took hold of me. As she sat back - watching me, I thought, though
with invisible eyes - and wearing at the same time an expression of
almost imbecile good-humour and contentment, she showed a
perfectness of feature and a quiet nobility of attitude that were
beyond a statue's. I took off my hat to her in passing, and her
face puckered with suspicion as swiftly and lightly as a pool
ruffles in the breeze; but she paid no heed to my courtesy. I went
forth on my customary walk a trifle daunted, her idol-like
impassivity haunting me; and when I returned, although she was
still in much the same posture, I was half surprised to see that
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous
freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ig-
norance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissi-
pation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty.
The most of us used to drink it down, and the result
was just what might be supposed; many of us
were led to think that there was little to choose
between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very prop-
erly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to
man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we
staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
