John Horne Burns

He knew instinctively the cardinal function of a teacher _ which is a stout lever to raw mass.

She saw why teachers get very old and stay very young. For there is no closer probing of the mind--not even in psychoanalysis.

They were our enemies. Yet in those young men of Italy I'd seen something centuries old. An American is only as old as his years. A long line of something was hidden behind the bright eyes of those Italians. And then and there I decided to learn something of the modern world. There was something abroad which we Americans couldn't or wouldn't understand. But unless we made some attempt to realize that everyone in the world isn't American, and that not everything American is good, we'll all perish together, and in this twentieth century....