| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: True it is that all their black-letter comes from Europe, and,
having cost many dollars, is well looked after; but there they
have thousands of seventeenth and eighteenth century books,
in Roman type, printed in the States on genuine and wholesome paper,
and the worm is not particular, at least in this country,
about the type he eats through, if the paper is good.
Probably, therefore, the custodians of their old libraries could tell
a different tale, which makes it all the more amusing to find in the
excellent "Encyclopaedia of Printing,"[1] edited and printed by Ringwalt,
at Philadelphia, not only that the bookworm is a stranger there,
for personally he is unknown to most of us, but that his slightest
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: in the middle of the day to fetch water from the fountain, or to buy what I
needed, and I was allowed to receive no books, newspapers or magazines. A
high barbed wire fence, guarded by armed natives, surrounded the village,
through which it would have been death to try to escape. All day the pom-
poms from the armoured trains, that paraded on the railway line nine miles
distant, could be heard at intervals; and at night the talk of the armed
natives as they pressed against the windows, and the tramp of the watch
with the endless "Who goes there?" as they walked round the wire fence
through the long, dark hours, when one was allowed neither to light a
candle nor strike a match. When a conflict was fought near by, the dying
and wounded were brought in; three men belonging to our little village were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural
consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of
life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of
enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle
fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society,
all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the
blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men
went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out
of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the
head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed
with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the
Robinson Crusoe |
