| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: as much mischief to their gentle neighbours as when a "collie"
worries the sheep. These evil results may always be minimized
by placing a piece of millboard between the culprit and his victim.
I have seen lovely bindings sadly marked by such uncanny neighbours.
When your books are being "dusted," don't impute too much common
sense to your assistants; take their ignorance for granted,
and tell them at once never to lift any book by one of its covers;
that treatment is sure to strain the back, and ten to one the weight
will be at the same time miscalculated, and the volume will fall.
Your female "help," too, dearly loves a good tall pile to work at and,
as a rule, her notions of the centre of gravity are not accurate,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: is a blind thing dependent on external influences, and moved by an
impulse of whose nature it is unconscious. It is a thing
incomplete in its essence, because limited by accident, and
ignorant of its direction, being always at variance with its aim.
Its basis is the lack of imagination. It is the last resource of
those who know not how to dream.
ERNEST. Gilbert, you treat the world as if it were a crystal ball.
You hold it in your hand, and reverse it to please a wilful fancy.
You do nothing but re-write history.
GILBERT. The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it. That
is not the least of the tasks in store for the critical spirit.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: Published June 1936 in Astounding Stories,
Vol. 17, No. 4, p. 110-54.
I
After twenty-two years of nightmare
and terror, saved only by a desperate conviction of the mythical
source of certain impressions, I am unwilling to vouch for the
truth of that which I think I found in Western Australia on the
night of 17-18 July 1935. There is reason to hope that my experience
was wholly or partly an hallucination - for which, indeed, abundant
causes existed. And yet, its realism was so hideous that I sometimes
find hope impossible.
Shadow out of Time |
