| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Door in the Wall, et. al. by H. G. Wells: our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at my
lady because no badge was on her, and we two went back to our own
place again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and I
aquiver with rage. So furious was I, I could have quarrelled with
her if I could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes.
"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down
our rock cell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the
southward that flared and passed and came again.
"'We must get out of this place,' I said over and over. 'I
have made my choice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. I
will have nothing of this war. We have taken our lives out of all
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: technical language.
"Ah, the cerebellum," said Miss Van Vluyck complacently. "The
Club took a course in psychology last winter."
"Which psychology?" asked Osric Dane.
There was an agonising pause, during which each member of the
Club secretly deplored the distressing inefficiency of the
others. Only Mrs. Roby went on placidly sipping her chartreuse.
At last Mrs. Ballinger said, with an attempt at a high tone:
"Well, really, you know, it was last year that we took
psychology, and this winter we have been so absorbed in--"
She broke off, nervously trying to recall some of the Club's
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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: our public libraries, and, to save themselves the trouble of copying,
will cut out whole articles from magazines or encyclopaedias.
Such depredations are not frequent, and only occur with books easily
replaced, and do not therefore call for more than a passing mention;
but it is a serious matter when Nature produces such a wicked old
biblioclast as John Bagford, one of the founders of the Society
of Antiquaries, who, in the beginning of the last century, went about
the country, from library to library, tearing away title pages from rare
books of all sizes. These he sorted out into nationalities and towns,
and so, with a lot of hand-bills, manuscript notes, and miscellaneous
collections of all kinds, formed over a hundred folio volumes,
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