| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Collected Articles by Frederick Douglass: 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
unfinished condition, if I struck a blow at my trade upon her.
This uncivil, inhuman, and selfish treatment was not so shocking
and scandalous in my eyes at the time as it now appears to me.
Slavery had inured me to hardships that made ordinary trouble sit
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: not offer to fire, for the carpenter would do the work without him;
but bid him heat another pitch-kettle, which our cook, who was on
broad, took care of. However, the enemy was so terrified with what
they had met with in their first attack, that they would not come
on again; and some of them who were farthest off, seeing the ship
swim, as it were, upright, began, as we suppose, to see their
mistake, and gave over the enterprise, finding it was not as they
expected. Thus we got clear of this merry fight; and having got
some rice and some roots and bread, with about sixteen hogs, on
board two days before, we resolved to stay here no longer, but go
forward, whatever came of it; for we made no doubt but we should be
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: novels; and these two words, 'subterreanean passage,'
were in themselves an irresistible attraction, and seemed
to bring us nearer in spirit to the heroes we loved and
the black rascals we secretly aspired to imitate. To
scale the Castle Rock from West Princes Street Gardens,
and lay a triumphal hand against the rampart itself, was
to taste a high order of romantic pleasure. And there
are other sights and exploits which crowd back upon my
mind under a very strong illumination of remembered
pleasure. But the effect of not one of them all will
compare with the discoverer's joy, and the sense of old
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