“We were just recollecting how speech in strange tongues came to men in the Bible days.”

Connecting an unexpected gift of speech with an ancient sacred memory · Short story, The Captain and the Miracle (1918)

• Faith
• Memory
• Truth

“And bits of his mission and his story had filtered through the masses, naturally haloing him to our elemental and, therefore, hero-worshiping crew.”

Showing how fragments of a life can grow into public legend · Short story, The Captain and the Miracle (1918)

• Fame
• Memory
• Truth

“Incidentally the captain—who was with us to investigate our gasoline prospects—was as fascinated as a boy or a poet with the history of Oklahoma, and he urged the Senator for all manner of details.”

Linking curiosity with the wonder of childhood and poetry · Short story, The Captain and the Miracle (1918)

• Childhood
• Memory
• Poetry

“Even a dumb man, I believed, would manage to convey to any willing listener a chronicle of his own little story.”

Affirming the human urge to make experience understood · Short story, The Captain and the Miracle (1918)

• Friendship
• Memory
• Truth

“And yet, although there were apparently hordes of us Americans who were eager and able to talk French with him, he could not be persuaded to speak of himself personally, or of his intimate experiences.”

A study of the distance between public curiosity and private suffering · Short story, The Captain and the Miracle (1918)

• Memory
• Solitude
• War