Voices from the Past

peare? I have not. That I have read the newspapers? I have not. During bouts of fever I let myself return to other days; I see a woman in a log cabin bending over an open fire. I smell

ber 1

e

y pigeonhole

s I will fee

in '44. We Lincolns were proud of that home. I liked the fireplace in the parlor on snowy nights. I liked the comfortable rockers and the black hair settee

" Then we rented our place. Wha

away a pair of

s, drums, bats. How Willie stormed when he

three words engraved on her w

reckoned w

en

ht, when the White House is wrapped in memories. Then, candle or lamp beside, a fire in the fireplace, I hunt for inner balance. Per-haps the candles go out. Perhaps the fire goes out. I w

br

y, that old French scholar and trav-el

passions. To dis-solve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy circumstances would be necessary: a whole nation, cured o

pas-sage of time, years of peace, will evolve prudence? Is war a k

Volney's Travels in Syria and

en

he young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes

the boys with

hite

eneral McClellan say: "We must declare a truce to bury our dead." Alexandria, Fairfax, Sharpsburg, Harper's Ferry, Spotsylvania. That peculiar blindness continues, focuses now on faces I

cers. Their logistics have led to useless slaughter. Hellish bungling, I call it. B

he entire world? What if I

mother s

out now and plant

.

, where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not! I like the system which lets a man

hite

ber 1

eps slaves, and Jefferson had two hundred. Call it custom,

intelligent diplomacy. The relationship with foreign nations is ofte

ined. I sympathize with his problems but I can not get deeper into th

p with the largest population and greatest wealth, surmising that these advantages would bring about a definite resolution. However, in this conflict, the gamble is also

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ber 2

oved a fireplace, and I said I liked one too-that we had a couple of them at home. She said she wrote a lot of her

me. I am afraid I reminisced too much about what I had read. She nodded very pleasantly and did not say much; wrap

got my guest; I could see a long road in summertime; I was walking along that road; I had borrowed Weems and stopped t

o say "good-bye