| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Letters of Two Brides by Honore de Balzac: subject of our dreams, take full possession of your soul. Womanly
beauty, refined and spiritualized in you, was created by God, for His
own purposes, to charm and to delight. Yes, my sweet, guard well the
secret of your heart, and submit Felipe to those ingenious devices of
ours for testing a lover's metal. Above all, make trial of your own
love, for this is even more important. It is so easy to be misled by
the deceptive glamour of novelty and passion, and by the vision of
happiness.
Alone of the two friends, you remain in your maiden independence; and
I beseech you, dearest, do not risk the irrevocable step of marriage
without some guarantee. It happens sometimes, when two are talking
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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: M. Derome loquitur:--
"Let us now enter the communal library of some large provincial town.
The interior has a lamentable appearance; dust and disorder have made
it their home. It has a librarian, but he has the consideration
of a porter only, and goes but once a week to see the state of
the books committed to his care; they are in a bad state, piled in
heaps and perishing in corners for want of attention and binding.
At this present time (1879) more than one public library in Paris
could be mentioned in which thousands of books are received annually,
all of which will have disappeared in the course of 50 years or so
for want of binding; there are rare books, impossible to replace,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed
part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim,
soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in -
shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity
received in her lap--cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck
fast in to-night. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house
of its rich maternal relations; it was reared by an aunt-in-law,
called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start--did
you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the
rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it
repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.--To
Jane Eyre |
