| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: a book or two, and having torn a dozen leaves or so down the middle,
would replace the volumes, fragments and all, in their places,
the damage being undiscovered until the books were wanted for use.
Reprimand, expostulation and even punishment were of no avail;
but a single "whipping" effected a cure.
Boys, however, are by far more destructive than girls,
and have, naturally, no reverence for age, whether in man or books.
Who does not fear a schoolboy with his first pocket-knife?
As Wordsworth did not say:--
"You may trace him oft
By scars which his activity has left
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Chinese Boy and Girl by Isaac Taylor Headland:
The boys spent a long time playing this game--indeed they seemed
to forget they were playing for us, and we were finally compelled
to call them off.
Chi had turned the marbles over to the others as soon as
he had fairly started it, and stood in that peculiar fashion of
his with one leg wound around the other, and when we
called to them, he simply said as though it were the next
part of the same game:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: another. Perhaps, after all, he only wanted to have something of her
to take home to think about. But he was not destined to profit by his
advantage.
"I don't think I understand what you mean," Katharine repeated, and
then she was obliged to stop and answer some one who wished to know
whether she would buy a ticket for an opera from them, at a reduction.
Indeed, the temper of the meeting was now unfavorable to separate
conversation; it had become rather debauched and hilarious, and people
who scarcely knew each other were making use of Christian names with
apparent cordiality, and had reached that kind of gay tolerance and
general friendliness which human beings in England only attain after
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