| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slave-holders at the North must be
in a similar condition. I could have landed in no part of the United States
where I should have found a more striking and gratifying contrast,
not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition of the colored
people there, than in New Bedford. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told me
that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts
that would prevent a colored man from being governor of the State,
if the people should see fit to elect him. There, too, the black man's
children attended the public schools with the white man's children,
and apparently without objection from any quarter. To impress me
with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Dark in the staring noon, dark was Rua's ravine,
Damp and cold was the air, and the face of the cliffs was green.
Here, in the rocky pit, accursed already of old,
On a stone in the midst of a river, Rua sat and was cold.
"Valley of mid-day shadows, valley of silent falls,
Rua sang, and his voice went hollow about the walls,
"Valley of shadow and rock, a doleful prison to me,
What is the life you can give to a child of the sun and the sea?"
And Rua arose and came to the open mouth of the glen,
Whence he beheld the woods, and the sea, and houses of men.
Wide blew the riotous trade, and smelt in his nostrils good;
Ballads |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: with the halo of the SERAPH.
A passionate desire to plunge back into the mire of earth and suffer
trial took possession of them,--trial through which they might
victoriously utter at the SACRED GATES the words of that radiant
Seraph.
The Seraph knelt before the SANCTUARY, beholding it, at last, face to
face; and he said, raising his hands thitherward, "Grant that these
two may have further sight; they will love the Lord and proclaim His
word."
At this prayer a veil fell. Whether it were that the hidden force
which held the Seers had momentarily annihilated their physical
Seraphita |
