| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: work was repeated three or four times, and at every turn, the
engine was so contrived, that the words shifted into new places,
as the square bits of wood moved upside down.
Six hours a day the young students were employed in this labour;
and the professor showed me several volumes in large folio,
already collected, of broken sentences, which he intended to
piece together, and out of those rich materials, to give the
world a complete body of all arts and sciences; which, however,
might be still improved, and much expedited, if the public would
raise a fund for making and employing five hundred such frames in
Lagado, and oblige the managers to contribute in common their
Gulliver's Travels |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: suited with dramatic fitness to the past crimes of the victims,
and had I to execute judgment on the criminal binders of certain
precious volumes I have seen, where the untouched maiden sheets
entrusted to their care have, by barbarous treatment, lost dignity,
beauty and value, I would collect the paper shavings so ruthlessly shorn off,
and roast the perpetrator of the outrage over their slow combustion.
In olden times, before men had learned to value the relics of our printers,
there was some excuse for the sins of a binder who erred from ignorance
which was general; but in these times, when the historical and antiquarian
value of old books is freely acknowledged, no quarter should be granted
to a careless culprit.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: her to the life she'll have to lead in India.'
'She won't need much reconciling, if she's like most girls,'
observed Mrs. Morgan, 'but he seems to be trying very hard.'
That was quite the way I took it--on my behalf--for several days.
When people have understood you very adequately for ten years you do
not expect them to boggle at any problem you may present at the end
of the decade. I thought Dacres was moved by a fine sense of
compassion. I thought that with his admirable perception he had put
a finger on the little comedy of fruitfulness in my life that
laughed so bitterly at the tragedy of the barren woman, and was
attempting, by delicate manipulation, to make it easier. I really
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