| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Through windy corridors of darkening end.
Here she could stand with one dim light above her
And hear far music, like a sea in caverns,
Murmur away at hollowed walls of stone.
And here, in a roofless room where it was raining,
She bore the patient sorrow of rain alone.
Your words were walls which suddenly froze around her.
Your words were windows,--large enough for moonlight,
Too small to let her through.
Your letters--fragrant cloisters faint with music.
The music that assuaged her there was you.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: classes of its people. The test of the real civilization of the
community came when I applied for work at my trade, and then my
repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so happened that Mr. Rodney
French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen, distinguished as an
anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for a whaling voyage,
upon which there was a heavy job of calking and coppering to be
done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied to Mr. French
for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would employ
me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon
reaching the float-stage, where others [sic] calkers were at work,
I was told that every white man would leave the ship, in her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: All his relatives are gone. He never married. Yes, he has come
back to see Eudora and marry her, if she will have him. No man
who ever loved Eudora would ever get over loving her. And he
will not be shocked when he sees her. She is no more changed
than a beautiful old statue."
"HE is changed, though," said Amelia. "I saw him the other day.
He didn't see me, and I would hardly have known him. He has
grown stout, and his hair is gray."
"Eudora's hair is gray," said Sophia.
"Yes, but you can see the gold through Eudora's gray. It just
looks as if a shadow was thrown over it. It doesn't change her.
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