It's a shame he didn't document each photo. My Dad was like that. He had a lot of history, but he didn't talk about it much.
I think you'll see the importance of writing things down in
the following fictional excerpt which is copyrighted by James D. Ellen:
CONTEXT: This scene transpires after a mob fired on Jose Pizanthia's cabin with a stolen mountain howitzer, burned the cabin down, and emptied their pistols into the man's body after lynching him. Pizanthia was a Mexican they thought had skimmed their sluices. Edgerton was a judge and became the first territorial governor of Montana after it became a territory. Magruder was a businessman who brought mining implements over the Bitterroots on a mule train.
The two of them had made an ineffectual attempt to stop the incident and were lucky to escape with their lives.
"Bad men don't do great things," Sydney Edgerton declared. "Men like you do great things. I'll tell the story if I'm still here to tell it. Professor Dimsdale will help, if I can get him to refrain from overstating his case."
"Professor Dimsdale?" Magruder asked.
"Thomas J. Dimsdale. He opened a school here on his own, and he's talking of publishing a newspaper soon. He's an educated man, if a bit of a consumptive egotistical twerp. He writes, and writers record history. Without them, people have to guess at history, or make up their own. Do you think we know The Battle of Thermopylae by counting bones on the ground? We know it because Thucydides wrote it down. And mark my words, there will be plenty of second-guessers passing judgment on us someday."
"There wasn't no second guessers at Thermopylae. I don't see none here either. No doubt they will appear someday; what they write down then is still a second guess," Magruder observed.
"You are correct, sir," Edgerton agreed. "Now I suggest we all have a cigar and let the smoke get in our eyes."
"I thought you'd never ask," Magruder said. |
