| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: the existence of most valuable works, unknown before-proving, at
the same time, the small value formerly attached to them.
Many a bibliographer, while examining old books, has to his great
puzzlement come across short slips of parchment, nearly always from some
old manuscript, sticking out like "guards" from the midst of the leaves.
These suggest, at first, imperfections or damage done to the volume;
but if examined closely it will be found that they are always in
the middle of a paper section, and the real reason of their existence
is just the same as when two leaves of parchment occur here and there
in a paper volume, viz.: strength--strength to resist the lug
which the strong thread makes against the middle of each section.
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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: the town, individually and in mass. But his laugh was the only one
left in the village: it fell upon a hollow and mournful vacancy and
emptiness. Not even a smile was findable anywhere. Halliday
carried a cigar-box around on a tripod, playing that it was a
camera, and halted all passers and aimed the thing and said "Ready!
--now look pleasant, please," but not even this capital joke could
surprise the dreary faces into any softening.
So three weeks passed--one week was left. It was Saturday evening
after supper. Instead of the aforetime Saturday-evening flutter and
bustle and shopping and larking, the streets were empty and
desolate. Richards and his old wife sat apart in their little
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: the monks and such like, and falsely imagined that the
observances of such men were more acceptable to God.
Thirdly, traditions brought great danger to consciences; for
it was impossible to keep all traditions, and yet men judged
these observances to be necessary acts of worship. Gerson
writes that many fell into despair, and that some even took
their own lives, because they felt that they were not able to
satisfy the traditions, and they had all the while not heard
any consolation of the righteousness of faith and grace. We
see that the summists and theologians gather the traditions,
and seek mitigations whereby to ease consciences, and yet they
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