A study analyzed how freshman composition students handled an assignment that forced them to perform an act of sophisticated literacy which was a variation between spontaneity (present) and repetition (past) with a focus on how novice writers borrow language, whether through quotation or misquotation. The assignment involved two masterpieces of American rhetoric; Nicholas Street's "The American States Acting Over the Part of the Children of Israel in the Wilderness and Thereby Impeding Their Entrance into Canaan's Rest," written in 1777, and Henry Ward Beecher's "The Battle Set in Array," written in 1861, just days after the bombing of Fort Sumter. Rhetorically these two examples of words that worked, are carried out by the preachers' use of the Exodus theme of the Old Testament. The preachers succeeded in their task through an artful mixing of Biblical language with the language of their times. Subjects, freshman composition students, were asked to do a number of writings based on these two sermons. Their main assignment was to write a paper detailing and evaluating how one of these two preachers drew analogies back to the Exodus theme and the likely success such an analogy would have in impelling congregants to political action. Results showed that students tended to use half-borrowings of words, overuse quotations and quotation marks, and waver in point of view. (RAE)