Introduction: The sense of the sense of the past --

"This comes of settling a country!": James Fenimore Cooper's The pioneers (1823) --

"The fluctuating waves of our social life": Nathaniel Hawthorne's The house of seven gables (1851) --

Visiting the "engine room": Henry Adams's Democracy (1880) --

"Hurried particles in the stream": Henry James's The Bostonians (1886) --

"The whirling surface of existence": Edith Wharton's The house of mirth (1905) --

"Roving tribes" and "brutal invaders": Willa Cather's The professors' house (1925) --

"The diminished grandeur of Washington Street": Ellen Glasgow's The sheltered life (1932) --

"The shock of communion": Allen Tate's The fathers (1938) --

"The price had been necessity": William Faulkner's The hamlet (1940) --

"The lost and impossible miles": A.B. Guthrie, Jr.'s These thousand hills (1956) --

Conclusion: The present situation.