| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: verses. Although it is characteristic of his native
town, and the manners of its youth to the present day,
this spirit has perhaps done something to restrict his
popularity. He recalls a supper-party pleasantry with
something akin to tenderness; and sounds the praises of
the act of drinking as if it were virtuous, or at least
witty, in itself. The kindly jar, the warm atmosphere of
tavern parlours, and the revelry of lawyers' clerks, do
not offer by themselves the materials of a rich
existence. It was not choice, so much as an external
fate, that kept Fergusson in this round of sordid
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom by William and Ellen Craft: master wanted money; so he sold my brother, and
then mortgaged my sister, a dear girl about four-
teen years of age, and myself, then about sixteen,
to one of the banks, to get money to speculate in
cotton. This we knew nothing of at the moment;
but time rolled on, the money became due, my
master was unable to meet his payments; so the
bank had us placed upon the auction stand and
sold to the highest bidder.
My poor sister was sold first: she was knocked
down to a planter who resided at some distance
Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: rightly or wrongly, considers itself noble, notwithstanding her own
large fortune and her guardian's.
Monsieur Joseph Salomon was resolved that if she could not secure a
country squire, his niece should go to Paris and make choice of a
husband among the peers of France, liberal or monarchical; as to
happiness, that he believed he could secure her by the terms of the
marriage contract.
Mademoiselle de Villenoix was now twenty. Her remarkable beauty and
gifts of mind were surer guarantees of happiness than those offered by
money. Her features were of the purest type of Jewish beauty; the oval
lines, so noble and maidenly, have an indescribable stamp of the
Louis Lambert |
