# Tense Question About Damon Runyon

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tense-question-about-damon-runyon/78851>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [August 30, 2001, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tense-question-about-damon-runyon/78851 "2001-08-30T01:16:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2023, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tense-question-about-damon-runyon/78851/21 "2023-04-12T21:31:44Z")

</div>

Very nice!

“Was” does appear in “The Lily of St. Pierre”–near the end of the story, “I sit down by the grave of Mrs. Jack O’Hearts, who was Lily Dorval, and for the first time I remember I bust out crying.”

ETA: And the copy of the story I am looking at does include “had” rather than “have”–“maybe he had a chance to think a little of Lily Dorval.”

Two past tenses in one story! What is this world coming to?

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tense-question-about-damon-runyon/78851.md?page=1)