| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Myths and Myth-Makers by John Fiske: with whom slaughter was an end desirable in itself, not merely
a means to a desirable end. What the miser is in an age which
worships mammon, such was the Berserker in an age when the
current idea of heaven was that of a place where people could
hack each other to pieces through all eternity, and when the
man who refused a challenge was punished with confiscation of
his estates. With these Northmen, in the ninth century, the
chief business and amusement in life was to set sail for some
pleasant country, like Spain or France, and make all the
coasts and navigable rivers hideous with rapine and massacre.
When at home, in the intervals between their freebooting
Myths and Myth-Makers |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: opened the window and looked out, and saw a
large number of flickering lights in the distance,
and heard a passenger in the next carriage--
who also had his head out of the window--say to
his companion, "Wake up, old horse, we are at
Philadelphia!"
The sight of those lights and that announce-
ment made me feel almost as happy as Bunyan's
Christian must have felt when he first caught sight
of the cross. I, like him, felt that the straps that
bound the heavy burden to my back began to
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Lady Susan by Jane Austen: settled in the world. To the fortune of a wife, the goodness of my own will
make me indifferent, but her family and character must be equally
unexceptionable. When your choice is fixed so that no objection can be
made to it, then I can promise you a ready and cheerful consent; but it is
my duty to oppose a match which deep art only could render possible, and
must in the end make wretched. It is possible her behaviour may arise only
from vanity, or the wish of gaining the admiration of a man whom she must
imagine to be particularly prejudiced against her; but it is more likely
that she should aim at something further. She is poor, and may naturally
seek an alliance which must be advantageous to herself; you know your own
rights, and that it is out of my power to prevent your inheriting the
Lady Susan |
