| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Pierrette by Honore de Balzac: less as Pierrette's guardian than as a leading elector in Provins.
To hear Vinet, people might have supposed that the Tiphaines were
making a great fuss about nothing; the mounting was bringing forth a
mouse. Sylvie, an eminently virtuous and pious woman, had discovered
an intrigue between her brother's ward and a workman, a Breton named
Brigaut. The scoundrel knew very well that the girl would have her
grandmother's money, and he wished to seduce her (Vinet to talk of
that!). Mademoiselle Rogron, who had discovered letters proving the
depravity of the girl, was not as much to blame as the Tiphaines were
trying to make out. If she did use some violence to get possession of
those letters (which was no wonder, when we consider what Breton
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: inconceivability of Flora's fancying herself still in a situation
not to jump at the chance of marrying a man like Dawling. "She
says he's too ugly; she says he's too dreary; she says in fact he's
'nobody,'" Mrs. Meldrum pursued. "She says above all that he's not
'her own sort.' She doesn't deny that he's good, but she finds him
impossibly ridiculous. He's quite the last person she would ever
dream of." I was almost disposed on hearing this to protest that
if the girl had so little proper feeling her noble suitor had
perhaps served her right; but after a while my curiosity as to just
how her noble suitor HAD served her got the better of that emotion,
and I asked a question or two which led my companion again to apply
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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: "Blatta germanica" and by others the "Croton Bug." Unlike our
household pest, whose home is the kitchen, and whose bashfulness
loves secrecy and the dark hours, this misgrown flat species,
of which it would take two to make a medium-sized English
specimen, has gained in impudence what it has lost in size,
fearing neither light nor noise, neither man nor beast.
In the old English Bible of 1551, we read in Psalm xci, 5,
"Thou shalt not nede to be afraied for eny Bugges by night."
This verse falls unheeded on the ear of the Western librarian
who fears his "bugs" both night and day, for they crawl over
everything in broad sunlight, infesting and infecting each corner
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