| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: The writer has lived, for many years, on the frontier-line
of slave states, and has had great opportunities of observation
among those who formerly were slaves. They have been in her family
as servants; and, in default of any other school to receive them,
she has, in many cases, had them instructed in a family school,
with her own children. She has also the testimony of missionaries,
among the fugitives in Canada, in coincidence with her own experience;
and her deductions, with regard to the capabilities of the race,
are encouraging in the highest degree.
The first desire of the emancipated slave, generally, is
for _education_. There is nothing that they are not willing to
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: University life, has added to that wealth much of his own gained
during his time of service, and if you care to hear he will tell
you many long and intimate stories. He can tell one about
extraordinary sages who knew _everything_, about remarkable
students who did not sleep for weeks, about numerous martyrs and
victims of science; with him good triumphs over evil, the weak
always vanquishes the strong, the wise man the fool, the humble
the proud, the young the old. There is no need to take all these
fables and legends for sterling coin; but filter them, and you
will have left what is wanted: our fine traditions and the names
of real heroes, recognized as such by all.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: and, seizing the poker, I dashed it repeatedly into the cinders,
and stirred them up with unwonted energy; thus easing my irritation
under pretence of mending the fire.
After this, Mr. Bloomfield was continually looking in to see if the
schoolroom was in order; and, as the children were continually
littering the floor with fragments of toys, sticks, stones,
stubble, leaves, and other rubbish, which I could not prevent their
bringing, or oblige them to gather up, and which the servants
refused to 'clean after them,' I had to spend a considerable
portion of my valuable leisure moments on my knees upon the floor,
in painsfully reducing things to order. Once I told them that they
Agnes Grey |
