“in the unliterary grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative, "to have been" is "to be."”

On The Art of Making Up One's Mind
The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1915/1915-h/1915-h.htm (1898)

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Jerome K. Jerome 87
English humorist 1859–1927

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