| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: I could hope that the lady would not take me for the local rate
collector; but now when my thoughts travel back to that episode
of my youth, I sometimes laugh at my own expense.
Suddenly, just as I was composing myself, at a turning in the
green walk, among a wilderness of flowers lighted up by a hot ray
of sunlight, I saw Juliette--Juliette and her husband. The pretty
little girl held her mother by the hand, and it was easy to see
that the lady had quickened her pace somewhat at the child's
ambiguous phrase. Taken aback by the sight of a total stranger,
who bowed with a tolerably awkward air, she looked at me with a
coolly courteous expression and an adorable pout, in which I, who
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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: of the volumes standing upon them, leaving the majority with a
perfectly untouched oval centre of white paper and plain print,
while the whole surrounding parts were but a mass of black cinders.
The salvage was sold in one lot for a small sum, and the purchaser,
after a good deal of sorting and mending and binding placed about 1,000
volumes for sale at Messrs. Puttick and Simpson's in the following year.
So, too, when the curious old Library which was in a gallery
of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, was nearly destroyed
in the fire which devastated the Church in 1862, the books
which escaped were sadly injured. Not long before I had spent
some hours there hunting for English Fifteenth-century Books,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Go in thy native innocence, rely
On what thou hast of virtue; summon all!
For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.
So spake the patriarch of mankind; but Eve
Persisted; yet submiss, though last, replied.
With thy permission then, and thus forewarned
Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning words
Touched only; that our trial, when least sought,
May find us both perhaps far less prepared,
The willinger I go, nor much expect
A foe so proud will first the weaker seek;
Paradise Lost |
