| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White: detail, your mind becomes confused to the point of mingling the
ingredients of the description. The resultant mental picture is a
composite; it mixes localities wide apart; it comes out, like the
snake-creeper-swamp-forest thing of grammar-school South America,
an unreal and deceitful impression. If, on the other hand, I try
to give you a bird's-eye view-saying, here is plain, and there
follows upland, and yonder succeed mountains and hills-you lose
the sense of breadth and space and the toil of many days. The
feeling of onward outward extending distance is gone; and that
impression so indispensable to finite understanding-"here am I,
and what is beyond is to be measured by the length of my legs and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: have endeavored to comply. I made an effort to rise, but fell
back in the attempt, before gaining my feet. The brute now gave
me another heavy kick, and again told me to rise. I again tried
to rise, and succeeded in gaining my feet; but upon stooping to
get the tub with which I was feeding the fan, I again staggered
and fell to the ground; and I must have so fallen, had I been
sure that a hundred bullets would have pierced me, as the
consequence. While down, in this sad condition, and perfectly
helpless, the merciless Negro breaker took up the hickory slab,
with which Hughes had been striking off the wheat to a level with
the sides of the half bushel measure (a very hard weapon) and
My Bondage and My Freedom |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: down between them the whole throng before her eyes sank to the
ground with one accord disclosing in the distance of the
courtyard a lonely figure leaning against the smooth trunk of a
tree. A white cloth was fastened round his head by a yellow cord.
Its pointed ends fell on his shoulders, framing a thin dark face
with large eyes, a silk cloak striped black and white fell to his
feet, and in the distance he looked aloof and mysterious in his
erect and careless attitude suggesting assurance and power.
Lingard, bending slightly, whispered into Mrs. Travers' ear that
that man, apart and dominating the scene, was Daman, the supreme
leader of the Illanuns, the one who had ordered the capture of
The Rescue |
