Fable
The clipper finds who is connected to whom
The constables investigated a cargo case. The clerk had already circled all the names, places, and business firms, yet the constable still could not tell who hired whom, who transferred the goods, and who was merely traveling on the same boat. The longer the list, the more scattered the case became.
He had the clerk circle names in several different colors, and the board became fancy, but the relationships remained unclear. The old constable changed the approach: everyone had to write the action between each pair of objects—lending money, testifying, delivering goods, hiring, disputing land—and keep the original sentence as evidence.
The fine signatures gradually connected into a network. An originally inconspicuous accountant frequently appeared on both the transfer and collection lines, and based on this the constable reviewed the files and found the missing intermediate link.
Recognizing objects is only the beginning; only by extracting verifiable relationships between objects can scattered information in the text be organized into a traceable case.