"
Bronze tablets bearing this oration for their inscription have been put on
the walls of schoolhouses and public buildings all the way across the
continent--plates in renewal of possession, that are another fruitage of
the valley where the French planted their plates of possession and
repossession a century before.
But I would also have read--especially in France, where letters are still
being written that have the quality of literature--a letter of this
frontiersman. The professor of history in the College of the City of New
York, showing me his museum, would have me read again this letter in the
hand of Abraham Lincoln; and I would have those beyond America, as well as
in that valley, hear what a man of the western waters could write before
the coming of the typewriter:
"DEAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a
statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother
of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how
weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to
beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.
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