| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him
I could write as well as he. The next word would be,
"I don't believe you. Let me see you try it." I would
then make the letters which I had been so fortunate
as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I
got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite
possible I should never have gotten in any other way.
During this time, my copy-book was the board fence,
brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a
lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to
write. I then commenced and continued copying the
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: million square miles. The formal transfer was made on December 17 of that
same year, 1803. There is my second jackstraw.
Thus, twenty years after the first time in 1783, Great Britain stood
between us and the designs of another nation. To that other nation her
fleet was the deciding obstacle. England did not love us so much, but she
loved France so much less. For the same reasons which I have suggested
before, self-interest, behind which lay her democratic kinship with our
ideals, ranged her with us.
To place my third jackstraw, which follows twenty years after the second,
uninterruptedly in this group, I pass over for the moment our War of 1812.
To that I will return after I have dealt with the third jackstraw,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: For Queen, a very caitiff crown'd with care;
For she that scorn'd at me, now scorn'd of me;
For she being fear'd of all, now fearing one;
For she commanding all, obey'd of none.
Thus hath the course of justice whirl'd about
And left thee but a very prey to time,
Having no more but thought of what thou wast
To torture thee the more, being what thou art.
Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not
Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?
Now thy proud neck bears half my burden'd yoke,
Richard III |
