As the audience increased, the style took on beauty and breadth,
as if the man's soul were looking through wider and wider windows
at the world. But it always remained the simplest of styles. In
an offhand reply to a serenade by an Indiana regiment, or in
answering a visiting deputation of clergymen at the White House,
Lincoln could summarize and clarify a complicated national
situation with an ease and orderliness and fascination that are
the despair of professional historians. He never wasted a word.
"Go to work is the only cure for your case," he wrote to John D.
Johnston. There are ten words in that sentence and none of over
four letters. The "Gettysburg Address" contains but two hundred
and seventy words, in ten sentences. "It is a flat failure," said
Lincoln despondently; but Edward Everett, who had delivered "the"
oration of that day, wrote to the President: "I should be glad if
I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of
the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." Today the
"Address" reads as if Lincoln knew that it would ultimately be
stamped in bronze.
Pages:
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266