| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: of communication.
It was she who, after awhile, began to speak with a new suffusing
diffidence that made him turn a roused eye on her.
"Don't they say," she asked, feeling her way as in a kind of
tender apprehensiveness, "that the early Christians, instead of
pulling down the heathen temples--the temples of the unclean gods--
purified them by turning them to their own uses? I've always
thought one might do that with one's actions--the actions one
loathes but can't undo. One can make, I mean, a wrong the door to
other wrongs or an impassable wall against them. . . ." Her voice
wavered on the word. "We can't always tear down the temples we've
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: afterwards the detested coupe could go back to London. The
day was still young, and after lunch and coffee upon a sunny
lawn a boat seemed indicated. Sir Richmond astonished the
doctor by going to his room, reappearing dressed in tennis
flannels and looking very well in them. It occurred to the
doctor as a thing hitherto unnoted that Sir Richmond was not
indifferent to his personal appearance. The doctor had no
flannels, but he had brought a brown holland umbrella lined
with green that he had acquired long ago in Algiers, and this
served to give him something of the riverside quality.
The day was full of sunshine and the river had a Maytime
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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: 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
Upon our shelves and volumes. * * *
He who with pocket-knife will cut the edge
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