| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: and blotted through his calculations; but from the moment he
rolled up the chart, his hours were passed in slavish
self-indulgence or in hoggish slumber. Every other branch of his
duty was neglected, except maintaining a stern discipline about
the dinner table. Again and again Herrick would hear the cook
called aft, and see him running with fresh tins, or carrying away
again a meal that had been totally condemned. And the more
the captain became sunk in drunkenness, the more delicate his
palate showed itself. Once, in the forenoon, he had a bo'sun's
chair rigged over the rail, stripped to his trousers, and went
overboard with a pot of paint. 'I don't like the way this
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: "The other's a bull-fight."
"I've seen lots of them; I wish I could see another."
"I don't know anything about it, except in a mixed-up, foggy way,
Antonio, but I know enough to know it's grand sport."
"The grandest in the world! There's no other sport that begins
with it. I'll tell you what I've seen, then you can judge. It was
my first, and it's as vivid to me now as it was when I saw it. It
was a Sunday afternoon, and beautiful weather, and my uncle, the
priest, took me as a reward for being a good boy and because of my
own accord and without anybody asking me I had bankrupted my
savings-box and given the money to a mission that was civilizing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: before many MSS. had been quite destroyed and many others injured.
Much skill was shown in the partial restoration of these books,
charred almost beyond recognition; they were carefully separated
leaf by leaf, soaked in a chemical solution, and then pressed
flat between sheets of transparent paper. A curious heap
of scorched leaves, previous to any treatment, and looking like
a monster wasps' nest, may be seen in a glass case in the MS.
department of the British Museum, showing the condition to which
many other volumes had been reduced.
Just a hundred years ago the mob, in the "Birmingham Riots,"
burnt the valuable library of Dr. Priestley, and in the "Gordon Riots"
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