| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: still must perish; the assistance of Europeans is necessary to
instruct them, but the approach of Europeans corrupts and repels
them into savage life; they refuse to change their habits as long
as their solitudes are their own, and it is too late to change
them when they are constrained to submit.
The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds, like
wild beasts; they sacked the New World with no more temper or
compassion than a city taken by storm; but destruction must
cease, and frenzy be stayed; the remnant of the Indian population
which had escaped the massacre mixed with its conquerors, and
adopted in the end their religion and their manners. *b The
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: with woodcuts, 1568.
A friend sends me the following incident: "A few years since,
some rats made nests in the trees surrounding my house;
from thence they jumped on to some flat roofing, and so made
their way down a chimney into a room where I kept books.
A number of these, with parchment backs, they entirely destroyed,
as well as some half-dozen books whole bound in parchment."
Another friend informs me that in the Natural History Museum of the
Devon and Exeter Institution is a specimen of "another little pest,
which has a great affection for bindings in calf and roan.
Its scientific name is Niptus Hololeucos." He adds, "Are you aware
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: face of the earth was peppered with the children of the manse, and
letters with outlandish stamps became familiar to the local
postman, and the walls of the little chambers brightened with the
wonders of the East. The dullest could see this was a house that
had a pair of hands in divers foreign places: a well-beloved house
- its image fondly dwelt on by many travellers.
Here lived an ancestor of mine, who was a herd of men. I read him,
judging with older criticism the report of childish observation, as
a man of singular simplicity of nature; unemotional, and hating the
display of what he felt; standing contented on the old ways; a
lover of his life and innocent habits to the end. We children
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