" [Footnote: Goldwin Smith, "Early Years of
A. Lincoln." In R. D. Sheppard, "Abraham Lincoln," p. 132.] These
appraisements I would hesitate to repeat in France, where all letters come
finally to be adjudged, if I did not know that this last document (the
Gettysburg speech), at least, had been admitted to the seat of the
immortal classics. It is said to have been written on scraps of paper, as
the great care-worn man rode in the car from Washington to Gettysburg, and
I have been told by one who was present at the ceremonies that the quiet
had hardly come over the vast audience, stirred by the eloquence of Edward
Everett's oration which had lasted two hours, before this briefest and
noblest of American orations, spoken in a high and unmusical voice by the
great lank figure, consulting his manuscript, was over. It is heard now in
the memory of millions of school-children from the Atlantic to the
Pacific:
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal.
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