ABSTRACT
Not all microhistories hinge on moments. In our first three chapters, we patched together multiple voices to fabricate a history of an instant, the better to see what made it work. A stone-fight, a séance, an arrest gone badly: these things were worth visiting because, thanks to careful collation of semi-concordant stories, we could see them at least half well, describe them warily, and then ask what shaped them. First, the historian must sift the memories, strategies in court, and narrative devices of the people who made the sources, to try to get behind the tales to reconstruct the world they tell about. The next task there is to make the picture meaningful.
