I've seen them, running around bollocky, playing God.

Devereux, indeed, being a fast man, with such acres as he inherited, which certainly did not reach a thousand, mortgaged pretty smartly, and with as much personal debt beside, of the fashionable and refined sort, as became a young buck of bright though doubtful expectations—and if the truth must be owned, sometimes pretty nearly pushed into a corner—was beholden, not only for his fun, but, occasionally for his daily bread and even his liberty, to those benevolent doles.

Such a legend—a mock one, recognized by its audience as talelike in execution and function—can be useful too, and in its light we need to broaden our conception of legends.

Given Mr. Kissinger’s firsthand experience in the anguishing decisions about withdrawal from Vietnam, the disclosure sparked the inevitable Iraq-Vietnam comparisons that Mr. Bush has assiduously sought to avoid.