|
Mason & Dixon (ISBN:0312423209)
|
"...Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only
in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left
within the reach of anyone in Power,—who need but touch her, and all her
Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs
rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters,
Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide
her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her
beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government..." (p.350)
|
|
|
"Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,—Tops and Hoops,
forever a-spin.... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle
Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to
lawyers,—nor is Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the
People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one,
as claim the Power of the other,—her Practitioners, to survive,
must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy and Taproom Wit,—that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a
Past we risk, each day, losing our forbears in forever,— not a
Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,—rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak
and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their
Destination in common." (p.349)
|
|
