| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a
brush together. But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I
sailed by them the same as if they were standing still. An
ordinary comet don't make more than about 200,000 miles a minute.
Of course when I came across one of that sort - like Encke's and
Halley's comets, for instance - it warn't anything but just a flash
and a vanish, you see. You couldn't rightly call it a race. It
was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph
despatch. But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I
used to flush a comet occasionally that was something LIKE. WE
haven't got any such comets - ours don't begin. One night I was
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: As Gareth brought him grovelling on his knees,
So many a time he vaulted up again;
Till Gareth panted hard, and his great heart,
Foredooming all his trouble was in vain,
Laboured within him, for he seemed as one
That all in later, sadder age begins
To war against ill uses of a life,
But these from all his life arise, and cry,
'Thou hast made us lords, and canst not put us down!'
He half despairs; so Gareth seemed to strike
Vainly, the damsel clamouring all the while,
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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 decay, and, not unseldom, dissects it after death.
Here, too, as through all Nature, we find the good and bad running
side by side. What a treat it is to handle a well-bound volume;
the leaves lie open fully and freely, as if tempting you to read on,
and you handle them without fear of their parting from the back.
To look at the "tooling," too, is a pleasure, for careful thought,
combined with artistic skill, is everywhere apparent. You open
the cover and find the same loving attention inside that has been
given to the outside, all the workmanship being true and thorough.
Indeed, so conservative is a good binding, that many a worthless
book has had an honoured old age, simply out of respect to its
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