ABSTRACT
It is the privilege and, in fact, business of the historian to "cheat": to peek ahead at any given moment in the historical record, to see "what happens next." Exercising this privilege to the limit, I will begin my story at the end, that is, on December 28, 1924, the date of the founding of the Linguistic Society of America. Better yet, I will begin just beyond that end and attempt to evoke "what happens next" in American linguistics in the year 1925.
