| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: of the truth. The world must return some day to the word
duty, and be done with the word reward. There are no
rewards, and plenty duties. And the sooner a man sees that
and acts upon it like a gentleman or a fine old barbarian,
the better for himself.
There is my usual puzzle about publishers. Chatto ought to
have it, as he has all the other essays; these all belong to
me, and Chatto publishes on terms. Longman has forgotten the
terms we are on; let him look up our first correspondence,
and he will see I reserved explicitly, as was my habit, the
right to republish as I choose. Had the same arrangement
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Before Adam by Jack London: been related to the Fire People. Her father, or
mother, might well have come from that higher stock.
While such things were not common, still they did
occur, and I have seen the proof of them with my own
eyes, even to the extent of members of the horde
turning renegade and going to live with the Tree
People.
All of which is neither here nor there. The Swift One
was radically different from any of the females of the
horde, and I had a liking for her from the first. Her
mildness and gentleness attracted me. She was never
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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: and doubtless the same sin will be committed from time to time
by certain binders, who seem to have an ingrained antipathy to rough
edges and large margins, which of course are, in their view,
made by Nature as food for the shaving tub.
De Rome, a celebrated bookbinder of the eighteenth century,
who was nicknamed by Dibdin "The Great Cropper," was, although in
private life an estimable man, much addicted to the vice of reducing
the margins of all books sent to him to bind. So far did he go,
that he even spared not a fine copy of Froissart's Chronicles,
on vellum, in which was the autograph of the well-known book-lover,
De Thou, but cropped it most cruelly.
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