Time & Perspective Quote by John D. Long

There is something almost aggressively un-literary about this line, and that is its point. John D. Long, a late-19th-century American politician who would later serve as Secretary of the Navy, isn’t trying to sparkle; he’s trying to signal. The sentence reads like private correspondence or a diary entry, the kind of mundane status update that, in political life, doubles as soft power: I am informed, I am industrious, I am aligned with the institutions I may soon be asked to steer.

Choosing Cooper matters. James Fenimore Cooper’s Naval History of the United States (a defensive, patriotic account written in the 1830s) is less a page-turner than a brief for national legitimacy at sea. Long calling it “very interesting” is polite understatement, the way a statesman praises a document that is useful rather than delightful. The subtext is credentialing: naval policy is not just ships and budgets, but narrative - a country’s self-image as a maritime actor. Reading becomes rehearsal for authority.

The phrasing also captures an older political style: seriousness performed through restraint. No opinionated flourish, no weaponized hot take, just the calm assertion of attention. In an era when U.S. naval expansion and American international posture were gaining momentum, “I am now reading” sounds like a small act, but it’s also an alibi of competence. He’s situating himself inside the tradition that justifies the Navy’s existence - not by shouting ideology, but by quietly absorbing the canon.