| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: for the term of immaturity. But it was really one of
those faces which convey less the idea of so many years
as its age than of so much experience as its store.
The number of their years may have adequately summed
up Jared, Mahalaleel, and the rest of the antediluvians,
but the age of a modern man is to be measured by the
intensity of his history.
The face was well shaped, even excellently. But the mind
within was beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon
to trace its idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves.
The beauty here visible would in no long time be ruthlessly
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: will be preserved from dust and injury for many a long year.
Old covers, whether boards or paper, should always be retained if
in any state approaching decency. A case, which can be embellished
to any extent looks every whit as well upon the shelf! and gives even
greater protection than binding. It has also this great advantage:
it does not deprive your descendants of the opportunity of seeing
for themselves exactly in what dress the book buyers of four centuries
ago received their volumes.
CHAPTER IX.
COLLECTORS.
AFTER all, two-legged depredators, who ought to have known better,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: Temple of the Sun, now not more than five miles away.
'I reach it or I die,' he gasped.
Oh, that last five miles! The skin was rubbed from the inside
of my legs, and every movement of my horse gave me anguish.
Nor was that all. I was exhausted with toil, want of food and
sleep, and also suffering very much from the blow I had received
on my left side; it seemed as though a piece of bone or something
was slowly piercing into my lung. Poor Daylight, too, was pretty
nearly finished, and no wonder. But there was a smell of dawn
in the air, and we might not stay; better that all three of us
should die upon the road than that we should linger while there
Allan Quatermain |
