Intrusive Narrators

from The Warden (1855) by Anthony Trollope

[John] Bold is thoroughly sincere in his patriotic endeavours to mend mankind, and there is

something to be admired in the energy with which he devotes himself to remedying evil and

stopping injustice; but I fear that he is too much imbued with the idea that he has a special

mission for reforming. It would be well if one so young had a little more diffidence in

himself, and more trust in the honest purposes of others--if he could be brought to believe

that old customs need not necessarily be evil, and that changes may possibly be dangerous;

but no; Bold has all the ardour and all the self-assurance of a Danton, and hurls his anathemas

against time-honoured practices with the violence of a French Jacobin.

from "Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce (1891)

Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly-respected Alabama family.

Being a slave owner, and, like other slave owners, a politician, he was naturally an original

secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. . . . No service was too humble

for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake

if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good

faith and without too much qualification assented to at least part of the frankly villainous

dictum that all is fair in love and war.