Time & Perspective Quote by Lewis Tappan

A businessman’s sentence shouldn’t read like a sight gag, but that’s exactly the chill here: a group of prisoners, offered clothes, stare long enough to make judgment visible, then laugh before complying. The line stages a small revolt that never becomes one. The laughter is the only agency left to them, a brief, communal performance that says: we see what you’re doing, we see what you think we are, and we can still ridicule it.

Tappan’s phrasing does double work. “Eyed” is appraisal, not gratitude; it frames the clothing as an object with a social meaning, not simply a kindness. “Some time” stretches the moment, forcing the reader to sit in the awkwardness of the exchange. Then comes the pivot: “laughed a good deal among themselves.” Among themselves matters. It draws a boundary line between the captives’ private world and the authorities’ public script of discipline, reform, or “civilizing.” The laughter is not for the benefactor. It’s a code.

The most revealing word is “before.” The order is the point: mockery first, submission second. They put the clothes on anyway, because the system always gets its ending, but Tappan can’t help noticing the intermediate beat where the system is briefly stripped of dignity.

Contextually, this sits in the 19th-century moral economy of uplift and control, where clothing signals status, docility, and the right kind of humanity. A businessman-observer registers the scene almost as a transaction, yet the prisoners’ reaction exposes the bad faith in the exchange: the gift is also a label.