| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Pupil by Henry James: not merely because they didn't pay their debts, because they lived
on society, but because their whole view of life, dim and confused
and instinctive, like that of clever colour-blind animals, was
speculative and rapacious and mean. Oh they were "respectable,"
and that only made them more immondes. The young man's analysis,
while he brooded, put it at last very simply - they were
adventurers because they were toadies and snobs. That was the
completest account of them - it was the law of their being. Even
when this truth became vivid to their ingenious inmate he remained
unconscious of how much his mind had been prepared for it by the
extraordinary little boy who had now become such a complication in
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: carefully, and you will see how she spends her time."
Ginevra was, therefore, observed with diabolical attention. They
listened to her songs, they watched her glances. At times, when she
supposed that no one saw her, a dozen pairs of eyes were furtively
upon her. Thus enlightened, the girls were able to interpret truly the
emotions that crossed the features of the beautiful Italian,--her
gestures, the peculiar tones in which she hummed a tune, and the
attention with which they saw her listen to sounds which only she
could hear through the partition.
By the end of a week, Laure was the only one of Servin's fifteen
pupils who had resisted the temptation of looking at Luigi through the
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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: all hazards, for the love of God and humanity! Ca-
pable of high attainments as an intellectual and
moral being--needing nothing but a comparatively
small amount of cultivation to make him an orna-
ment to society and a blessing to his race--by the law
of the land, by the voice of the people, by the terms
of the slave code, he was only a piece of property, a
beast of burden, a chattel personal, nevertheless!
A beloved friend from New Bedford prevailed on
Mr. DOUGLASS to address the convention: He came
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
