| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: throwing away a lot of money. True, as one walks the streets of St.
Petersburg one seems to smell money by the thousand roubles, but our
friend Kopeikin's bank was limited to a few score coppers and a little
silver--not enough to buy a village with! At length, at the price of a
rouble a day, he obtained a lodging in the sort of tavern where the
daily ration is a bowl of cabbage soup and a crust of bread; and as he
felt that he could not manage to live very long on fare of that kind
he asked folk what he had better do. 'What you had better do?' they
said. 'Well the Government is not here--it is in Paris, and the troops
have not yet returned from the war; but there is a TEMPORARY
Commission sitting, and you had better go and see what IT can do for
Dead Souls |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact: in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and
combine ourselves together into a civill Body Politick,
for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance
of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact,
constitute, and frame, such just and equall Laws, Ordinances,
Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time,
as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the
Generall Good of the Colonie; unto which we promise
all due Submission and Obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names
at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Raigne of our
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: which I seized the job, may not easily be understood, except by
some one with an experience like mine. The thoughts--"I can
work! I can work for a living; I am not afraid of work; I have
no Master Hugh to rob me of my earnings"--placed me in a state of
independence, beyond seeking friendship or support of any man.
That day's work I considered the real starting point of something
like a new existence. Having finished this job and got my pay
for the same, I went next in pursuit of a job at calking. It so
happened that Mr. Rodney French, late mayor of the city of New
Bedford, had a ship fitting out for sea, and to which there was a
large job of calking and coppering to be done. I applied to that
My Bondage and My Freedom |
