| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac: winter nights. The eye seemed as if it would fain dart fire at
Don Juan; he saw it thinking, upbraiding, condemning, uttering
accusations, threatening doom; it cried aloud, and gnashed upon
him. All anguish that shakes human souls was gathered there;
supplications the most tender, the wrath of kings, the love in a
girl's heart pleading with the headsman; then, and after all
these, the deeply searching glance a man turns on his fellows as
he mounts the last step of the scaffold. Life so dilated in this
fragment of life that Don Juan shrank back; he walked up and down
the room, he dared not meet that gaze, but he saw nothing else.
The ceiling and the hangings, the whole room was sown with living
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain: to make the world laugh at US, along with the rest, and-- Give them
to ME, since you can't do it!" He snatched them and tried to hold
his grip till he could get to the stove; but he was human, he was a
cashier, and he stopped a moment to make sure of the signature.
Then he came near to fainting.
"Fan me, Mary, fan me! They are the same as gold!"
"Oh, how lovely, Edward! Why?"
"Signed by Harkness. What can the mystery of that be, Mary?"
"Edward, do you think--"
"Look here--look at this! Fifteen--fifteen--fifteen--thirty-four.
Thirty-eight thousand five hundred! Mary, the sack isn't worth
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: CHAPTER III.
GAS AND HEAT.
WHAT a valuable servant is Gas, and how dreadfully we
should cry out were it to be banished from our homes;
and yet no one who loves his books should allow a single jet
in his library, unless, indeed he can afford a "sun light,"
which is the form in which it is used in some public libraries,
where the whole of the fumes are carried at once into the open air.
Unfortunately, I can speak from experience of the dire effect of gas
in a confined space. Some years ago when placing the shelves
round the small room, which, by a euphemism, is called my library,
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