The situation has consequences. Though the king who can command a poet or the politician who can catch a biographer will always have one, few other persons outside the poet’s or the biographer’s own caste boast any such intercessors with the future. The most mighty man of business perishes from the public memory almost as speedily as the most petty trader. The artisan who has invented no matter how comfortable devices and the athlete who has been no matter how much on the tongues of men leave but short wakes of fame behind them. Now this may hint that those who do not survive actually merit oblivion, but it does not prove it. Rather, it proves that peoples have the best memories with regard to those men and women about whom there are voices to go on speaking. In any given generation rumour widens out in various ways: its heroes are pugilists and saints and misers and entertainers and generals and statesmen and orators and preachers and lovers and murderers and philanthropists and scholars and poets and humorists and musicians and detectives—all mingled in one vast confusion. But with posterity selection intervenes. A hundred fames grow dim because no one has a special reason for perpetuating them; word of mouth in general is not enough. Even particular professions in time forget those who once practised them eminently. Only of the men of letters—bards and biographers—is it the trade as well as the delight to keep old reputations burning. And it is only certain things that they remember: blood and glory and learning. Paul Revere gave a lifetime to a noble craft and a few hours all told to a midnight ride which any man might have made who was able to sit a horse and follow a dark road. Who now hears of Revere’s craft? He is merely a demigod and Longfellow is his prophet; the two of them symbolize the past, as most men see it, and the way of the bards with the past.