"I don't know that I care for the thousands of years. I care for this year and next year."
"And a great deal of good thought has been put into it already."
"But not the best. The whole subject needs ventilating, shaking up."
"You would attack the fundamentals, then?"
"Why not? I'm a radical. I've always called myself such. I go to the root, without fear, without favour."
"Still, the present arrangement, resulting from the collective wisdom and experience of the race …" said Medora, crumbling her last bit of cake.
"You make me think of Bond and his 'historical perspective.'"
"I meant to. It isn't enough to know at just what point in the road we are; we must know what steps we have taken, what course we have traversed, to reach it."
"I never look behind. The hopes and possibilities of the immediate future are the things that interest me. I shall read several chapters of Regeneration—not merely one—on my tour."
"On your tour, yes. But for Mrs. Whyland substitute something else. There was a story you wrote at the farm—the one about the girl and her step-mother—"