| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: It was a wall of old fathers, fifteenth century chronicles,
county histories, Chaucer, Lydgate, and such like. Some few yards off
were the Britishers, provided with heaps of small books as missiles,
with which they kept up a skirmishing cannonade against the foe.
Imagine the tableau! Two elderly gentlemen enter hurriedly,
paterfamilias receiving, quite unintentionally, the first edition
of "Paradise Lost" in the pit of his stomach, his friend narrowly
escaping a closer personal acquaintance with a quarto Hamlet
than he had ever had before. Finale: great outburst of wrath,
and rapid retreat of the combatants, many wounded (volumes) being
left on the field.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.
IV
Summer Sun
Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven with repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.
Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: stages daily bringing news of - the turbulent world away
below there; and perhaps once in the summer, a salt fog
pouring overhead with its tale of the Pacific.
A STARRY DRIVE
IN our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum.
The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick;
and, as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount
Saint Helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back
to Calistoga and a cottage on the green. By that time we had
begun to realize the difficulties of our position. We had
found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our
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