In the minds of the men who
make that demand ninety-nine years is so long as to mean "forever."
But suppose there is reason to think that surface cars, run from a
central power plant on tracks, are going out of fashion in twenty
years. Then it is a most unwise contract to make, for you are
virtually condemning a future generation to inferior transportation.
In making such a contract the city officials lack a realizing sense of
ninety-nine years. Far better to give the company a subsidy now in
order to attract capital than to stimulate investment by indulging a
fallacious sense of eternity. No city official and no company official
has a sense of real time when he talks about ninety-nine years.
Popular history is a happy hunting ground of time confusions. To the
average Englishman, for example, the behavior of Cromwell, the
corruption of the Act of Union, the Famine of 1847 are wrongs suffered
by people long dead and done by actors long dead with whom no living
person, Irish or English, has any real connection. But in the mind of
a patriotic Irishman these same events are almost contemporary. His
memory is like one of those historical paintings, where Virgil and
Dante sit side by side conversing. These perspectives and
foreshortenings are a great barrier between peoples. It is ever so
difficult for a person of one tradition to remember what is
contemporary in the tradition of another.
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