| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: which your race enjoy at the North, with that "noon
of night" under which they labor south of Mason
and Dixon's line. Tell us whether, after all, the half-
free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than
the pampered slave of the rice swamps!
In reading your life, no one can say that we have
unfairly picked out some rare specimens of cruelty.
We know that the bitter drops, which even you have
drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations,
no individual ills, but such as must mingle always
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad
to be alive. And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon,
when I caught sight of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift.
This person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was
standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages
of the sort already referred to. However, this one hadn't
a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted
and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard,
which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing.
I was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home--
it was the custom of the country..
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: grief in the camp, and the plain was filled with the cries of men calling
out for Scipio; for, from his very youth, he was an object of admiration;
endowed above any of his equals with the good qualities requisite either
for command or counsel. At length, when it was late, and they almost
despaired, he returned from the pursuit with only two or three of his
companions, all covered with the fresh blood of his enemies, having been,
like some dog of noble breed, carried away by the pleasure, greater than
he could control, of his first victory. This was that Scipio
that afterwards destroyed Carthage and Numantia, and was, without
dispute, the first of the Romans in merit, and had the greatest authority
amongst them. Thus Fortune, deferring her displeasure and jealousy of
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