The World of Carl Sandburg

You Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to travel fast

and far tonight because we have a world to girdle and cross in less than one hour, the fabulous world of Carl Sandberg. Some of it hitherto unexplored. We hope that you will share with a certain thrills of discovery. For one thing some of the pieces you hear tonight have not yet been published and Mr. Sandberg has given us the privilege of introducing them to the world through you. Having said this much let it be known that my name is Fritz Weaver and that there are six of us in the act here tonight including the first woman television explorer ever to go out into space of Carl Sandberg's world, ladies and gentlemen Miss Uterhagen. And though none of us can fill Carl Sandberg's

chair or do more than flick over the surface of his writings it is entirely possible to engage his guitar and for this purpose we have enlisted the Tariots and Miss Carolyn Hester. Nowhere in the world is there such a boastful panorama of history as in a song called I was born almost 10 ,000 years ago. It's in Sandberg's American songbag not on the basis of its simple melody but because it is to quote Sandberg a vest pocket in cyclopedia, an outline of history with numerous references to various picturesque personages. It packs a wicked lot of biography. The Tariots. And I'll throw the hymna guy away to the floor.

I saw Samson when he laid the village cold, saw Daniel tame the lions in the hole, then he'll build a tower of fable up as high as they were able and in lots of other things I haven't known. I taught Solomon his little ABCs. I was the first man to eat and while floating down the bay with the blues on the one day I saw his wiskers floating in the breeze. I was born about 10 ,000 years ago. There ain't nothing in this world that I don't know. I saw Peter Paul and Moses

playing ring around the roses and I'll walk the guy that says it is in the song. On the basis of first things first when logically starts to explore Sandberg's world with children, not children at the cowboy or the Superman stage but babies infants. Sandberg has many things to say and ask about children, the sacred legion of the just born. How many thousands born this very minute? To Sandberg each of them is worth considerably more than a bundle that mules and pukes in his mother's arms. There's a paragraph in Sandberg's novel Remembrance Rock in which he has things to say about it. A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby.

The finest of our precision watches the most super colossal of our supercargo planes. Don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and the ingenuity of coils and springs in the flow and in the change of chemical solutions in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern and yet it is the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he's a horrid, venerable antique but he is. Before a man learned how to make a fire, how to make a wheel, how to make an alphabet. He knew how to make a baby with the great help of woman and God and maker. There's a paragraph in the people, yes, that collection of what Sandberg calls Psalms, Memoranda sayings, Yarns, in which he sounds a fanfare for the justborn, Miss Hagen. Can you make baby poems for those who love special babies, clean,

antiseptic babies? What of those red Indian babies, fresh from the birthing crutch, for each of them the mystery man raised his right hand to the sky and called, hey you sun -moon stars and your winds, clouds rain, mist, listen to me. Listen, the news is another baby belonging has come to this earth of ours. Make its path smooth so it can reach the top of the first hill and the second hill. And hey you valleys, rivers, lakes, trees, grasses, you make its path smooth so it can reach the top of the third hill and listen you birds of the air, you animals of a tall timbers, you bugs and creepers, you too listen, all you of sky, earth and air, I ask you beg you, pass

this baby on till it climbs up over and beyond the fourth hill. From then on this child will be strong enough to travel on its own and see what is beyond those four hills. From Mr. Sandberg's American songbag, here is a traditional lullaby, this one from Athens, Georgia. Have a piece of cake, coachin' six little horses, go to sleep a little

baby, go to sleep a little baby, when you wake you shall have a piece of cake, coachin' six little horses, up black and a bay, a dapful and a grave, go to sleep a little baby. Thank you, Miss Esther. In the literature of growing up, there are very few great examples of advice to the young, polonious to lairt his in hamlet, kipplings if and after that you're on your own, but Sandberg's advice to a young man could be from any father to any son, it

occurs in the people yes. A father sees a son nearing manhood, watch shall he say to that son, life is hard, be steel, be a rock, and this might stand him for the storms and serve him for humdrum and monotony and guide him amid sudden the trails and tighten him for the slack moments. Life is a soft loam, be gentle, go easy, and this too might serve him. Brutes have been gentle where lashes failed, the growth of a frail flower in a path up has sometimes shattered and split a rock. A tough will counts, so does desire, so does a rich soft wanting, without rich wanting nothing arrives. Tell him too much money has killed men and left them dead years before burial.

A quest of looker, beyond a few easy needs, has sometimes twisted good enough men into dry, forted worms. Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted. Tell him to be a fool every so often and have no shame over having been a fool, get learning something out of every folly, hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies. Thus arriving at intimate understanding of a world numbering many fools, tell him to be alone often and get at himself and above all, tell himself no lies about himself, whatever the white lies and the protective fronts he may use amongst other people. Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong and the final decisions are made in silent rooms. Tell him to be different from other people if it comes natural and easy

being different. Let him have lazy days seeking his deep motives and let him seek deep for where he is a born natural. Then he may understand Shakespeare and the Wright brothers, pastor, Pavlov, Michael Faraday, and free imaginations, bringing changes into a world resenting change. He will have time enough and he will be lonely enough to have time for the work he knows as his own. Sandberg's struggles have taken him through the crazily varied occupations of tinsmith, waiter, milkwagon driver, wheat harvester, dishwasher, stoker, soldier, hobo, reporter, critic, novelist, historian, biographer. He has observed and written about scores of people throughout his journeys. Here are a few of them, first and

old woman. Miladrid Klinghofer, world through youth in blue. One baby came and was taken away. Another came and was taken away. From her windows she saw the corn rows young and green and later the blue mist of a winter thought deepening at evening. In her middle forties her first husband died. In her middle 60s her second husband died. In her middle 70s her third husband died and she died at mid 80 with her fourth husband at the bedside. Thus she had known an editor, a lawyer, a grocer, a retired farmer. To the first of them she had borne two children she had hungered for and deep in her had stayed a child hunger.

In the last hours when her mind wandered she cried imperiously, my baby, give me my baby, and her cries for this child born of her mind in her final moments of life went on and on. When they answered your baby isn't here or your baby is coming soon if you will wait she kept on with her cry, my baby let me hold my baby and they made a rag doll and laid it in her arms and she clutched it as a mother would and she was satisfied and so her second childhood ended like her first with a doll in her arms. There are dreams stronger than death men and women die holding these dreams. Two angry men in a Colorado graveyard two men lie in one grave. They shot it out in a jam over who owned one corner locked over

a piece of real estate they shot it out. It was a perfect duel each cleansed the world of the other each horizontal in an identical grave at his bones cleaned by the same maggots. They sleep now as two accommodating neighbors. They had speed and no control they wanted to go and didn't know where. A married couple. The law says you and I belong to each other George. The law says you are mine and I am yours George. And there are a million miles of white snowstorms a a million furnaces of hell between the chair where you sit and the chair where I

sit. The law says two strangers shall eat breakfast together after nights on the horn of an Arctic moon. There's a whisper of a poem which is a tame great popularity. Ms. Hagen. The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over a harbor in city on silent honches and then moves on. No poem is too small to be big. Neither are there any objects too large or too inconspicuous for Sandberg's notice. He sees fun and color in objects we use every day without thinking twice or even once about them. He sees stories, fables,

poems, parables and even high nonsense. For instance glass. Glass is where your eye looks through and you put your hand out and the glass stops it. Looking glass is where you wonder where your face came from. Looking glass tells you how you think you look when other people look at you. I glasses are to take off when you're going to fight with fists. Snakes. Some snakes are all neck. Girl snakes show off their curves. Water snakes like water. Markisons snakes like Markisons. Bugs. When bugs come home they come home to bug houses. When bugs meet they talk bug talk. Ungrammatical bugs say how is

things. 16 -legged bugs sometimes lose a leg or two and don't even notice it. The shorter a short bug is the more he brags how short he is. The longer a long bug is the more he hopes he will not break in the middle and be two short bugs. Well as we probably got it by now there's nothing sterile about Sandberg. He never fusses with the passions in a test tube. Never dissects and analyzes thought and emotion but deals with them frontally. Here's a fragment called snatch of sliphorn jazz. Are you happy? She only way to be kid. Yes be happy. It's a good nice way to be but not happy happy kid. Don't be too double up dog gone happy. So double up dog gone happy happy people bust hard. They

do bust hard when they bust. So be happy kid go to it but don't be too dog gone happy. Sandberg's world encompasses many moods, joy, love, hate. He knows the workings of hate. If you hate a man, let him live. You may live to see him suffer. He may live to see you suffer or in the slow sliding away of days you might both forget each other. Now the opposite of hate is love. Thanks to its unending and deserved popularity. Love has been the principal theme in every form of literature from dirty limericks to Romeo and Juliet. Miss Hargan now brings us a rare jewel from the Sandberg's collection. It's a soliloquy on the forms of love and belongs high up if not at the very top of uniqueness in the language of love. Miss Hargan. Love. Is it a cat

with claws and wild mates screams in the black night? Love. L -O -B -E. Is it a tug at the heart that comes high and costs? Always costs as long as you have it? Love. Is it a free, glad spender ready to spend to the limit and then go head over heels in debt? Love. Can it hit one without hitting two and leave the one lost and groovy? Love. I said love. L -O -B -E. Can you pick it up like a mouse and put it in your pocket and take it to your room and bring it out of your pocket and say, oh here is my love, my little pretty mousey love. Yes, love. This little word you hear about is love and elephant and you step out of the way where the elephant comes trampling, trampling, trampling with big feet and long flaps of drooping ears and ivory tusks and you step out of the way with respect, with high

respect and a surprise near to a shock as you say, what's he's big? You're big like stupendous as big, heavy and elephant time and funny, immense and slow and easy. You're big like super colossal, is terrible and big. I'm asking is love an elephant or a snake? Say like a rattlesnake, like a creeping winding slithering rattlesnake with fangs, poison fangs they tell me, and when the bite of it gets you then you run crying for help if you don't fall cold and dead on the way. Can love be a snake? Or would you say love is a flamingo with pink feathers, a soft sunset pink, a sweet gleaming naked pink with enough long feathers you could make the fan for a fan dance and hear a girl telling her lover, speak my chosen one and tell me

what manner of fan dance you would have with me in the black velvet sheen of midnight. Could it be love is a flamingo? Or could it be love is a big red apple and you don't know whether to bite into it and you knock on wood and you call off your luck numbers and you hold your breath and you put your teeth into it and get a mouthful of it and taste all there is to it and whether it's sweet and wild or a dry mush you want to spit out it's something else than you expected. I'm asking kind sir, is love a big red apple? Maybe it's scooper dust. I hadn't thought about that for you go to the guffertry at midnight and gather the leaves and crush them into a fine dust very fine sir and when your man sleeps you sprinkle it in his shoes and he's helpless and he can't get away from you for he

snared and tangled and can't keep from loving you. Could guffert us be the answer? And are they after beguiling and befuzzling us when they tell us love is a rose? A red red rose, the mystery of leaves folded over and under and you can take it to pieces and throw it away petal by petal into the wind blowing it away or you can wear it for a soft spot of crimson in your hair at your breast and a corsage and a girdle and you can waltz and rumble wearing your sweet rose and take it home and lay it on a windowsill in the sun and see it with a brown and curl black and shrivel till one day you're not careful and it crackles to dust in your hand and the wind whisks it whether whether you know not whether you care not whether you don't give one little solitary damn where it's gone for it was just one more flame of

a rose that came with its red blush and crimson bloom and did the best it could with what it had and nobody wins and nobody loses and what's one more rose and on any street corner on bright summer mornings you see them with bunches of roses in their hands their hands out toward you roses today fresh roses from the bush a rose for you sir the ladies like roses then there are those who say love is a little white bird and the flight of it so fast you can't see it and you know it's there only by the faint word of its wings and the harsh song it sings you listen keen you listen long and you'd like to write it but it can't be written and you'd like to sing it but you don't dare try because a little white bird sings it better than you can so you listen and why are you pray and after you pray you

meditate and then pray some more and one day it's as though a great slow wind had washed you clean and strong inside and out and the little white birds hush song telling you nothing can harm you the days to come can weave in and weave out and spin their fabrics and designs for you and nothing can harm you unless you change yourself into a thing of harm nothing can harm you the little white bird is my candidate ladies and gentlemen I give you the little white bird you can't see though you can hear it's hush song and when you hear that hush song it's love and I'm ready to swear to it and you can bring in a stack of affidavits and I'll swear to it and I'll sign my name to every last so help me God and if a fat bumbling shop worn court clerk tells me hold up your hand I'll hold up my hand all right and when he bumbles and mumbles to me like I was one more witness it was work for him to give

the oath to when he blabs you those solemnly swear that in this cause you will tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I'll say I do and no thanks to you and you could be more immaculate with the name of God and so I give you the little white bird and my thanks for you hearing me and my prayers for you my deep silent prayers haha Sandberg reveals himself in a thousand ways one of his

most famous poems is a poem so short you could wrap a cigarette in it it's called Fizzarg listen as Mr Sandberg reads it for us this face you got this your Fizzarg you carry around you never picked it out for yourself at all at all did you this here Fizzarg somebody handed it to you am I right somebody said if yours now go see what you can do with it somebody slipped it to you it was like a package marked no good six chains after being taken away this this face you got now it seems that numbers have always exercised a powerful attraction for Carl Sandberg both on and off the printed page with respect to numbers here he is illuminating children and us on the subject

of arithmetic arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many you had before you lost or won arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven and five six bundle of sticks arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out the window and see the blue sky or everything is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time if you take a number and double it and double it again and then double it a few more times the number gets bigger and bigger and goes higher and and only arithmetic can tell you what the number is when you decide to quit doubling arithmetic is where you have to multiply and you carry the multiplication table in your head and you hope you won't lose it

if you have two animal crackers one good and one bad and you eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over and meets the other how many animal crackers will you have if somebody offers you five six seven and you say no no no and you say nay nay nay and you say next next next if you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them who is better in arithmetic you or your mother the C and the stars says Sandberg are made and held by numbers it could be there's a faint echo of this in a text and lullaby called by and by in his songbag Sandberg's description refers to the stealth and mystery of the coming out of stars one by one on the night sky number two number

three good lord bye bye bye bye good lord bye bye bye bye bye bye bye star shining number number one number two number three good lord bye bye bye bye good lord bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye the the pestilences

of the world are present and accounted for and Sandberg's works but as you would expect the foulest pestilence in Sandberg's file is that scourge of our time and all previous times war interesting people who say the word war now as though the word carries the same meaning now as it did before interesting people who speak of the potential war as a conflict wherein one comes out loser the other a victor and like an old times the loser pays the losses the victor collects and everything goes on interesting people who think of the war who mentioned war as though the next war could be one war war like other wars interesting people who like to do what they've always done who like to think what they've always thought who like to imagine the next war can be a terrific cyclone and when it's over those who win the war will have a good time enjoying

their winnings interesting people perhaps Sandberg's most crushing war poem was a poem he wrote not long ago it's called the Unknown War be calm collected easy in the face of the next war to come be calm in the faint light and flesh and smoke a mushroom of the first bomb blast of the third world war keep your wits collected at the information to be given out after the few days of the fast moving next war take it easy be calm and collected and say to yourself first things come first and after this world comes another beware of the matters not to be spoken of beware of such matters as must be spoken of watch your ears as to things heard often watch your ears as to things seldom heard pick and

choose of what comes to your ears select and sift believe or disbelieve and on stated occasions feeling a little high believe perfectly in the completely unbelievable thus making under the tilt and feel of your hat miss your own miracles be held of your eyes alone introducing set a spieler with a cock eye at her shell introducing misnuclear fission a wild gal in her time and she's going to be wilder yet and you notice I don't dare touch her she's that wild introducing set a spieler introducing mr. chain reaction her pal and dancing partner a hairy brute ten billion gorillas in one and when he tickles your what gives nothing only you die laughing so what so we must become collected easy facing the next war

and we can remember the man sitting on a red hot stove as he sniffed the air is something burning or the Kansas farmer we ask the cyclone to go around our barn but he didn't hear us or we can turn to the books and take a look see and then take a cry or a laugh as the saying goes they say to the books begin your war and it becomes something else than you saw before you began it it runs longer a shorter than planned it comes out like nobody running it expected ending with both sides saying we are surprised at what happened a marshal of France spoke like a gambler flipping a card or throwing ivory cubes saying as how he had finished what might be said the controlling factor in war is the unknown wherefore we take a deep look into the unfathomable and come out with a finger

hole on wriggling deductions fished from a barrel of conniving and fructifying eels the bombs of the next war if they control hold the unknown blasts the bacterial spreads of the next war if they control reek with the unknown the round the curve of the earth guided missiles of the next war should they control will have the slide and hiss of the unknown the cosmic rays or light beams carrying a moonshine kiss of death if and when they control will have the mercy of the sudden unknown we shall do the necessary we shall meet the inevitable we shall be prepared we shall stand before the unknown aware of the controlling factor the controlling factor the controlling factor the

unknown perhaps there is a greater controlling factor of man's fate than any of these a hint of it comes in a moment of the people yes when a little girl watching a parade of soldiers says you know something sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come no more I'm going to lay down my sword and

she oh I'm going to put on my golden shoes down by the river side I'm by the river side I'm going to put on my gold shoes down by the river side I'm going to study war no more I ain't come study war no more i ain't come study war I ain't come study war no more I ain't come study war no more i ain't come study war no more I'm going to walk with my brothers in peace and down by the river side down by the river side The town by the riverside, what a walk, when my brothers and sisters, The town by the riverside, what

a study, what a walk. I go study for no more, I go study for no more, I go study for no more. I go study for no more, I go study for no more, I go study for no more. I go study for no more, I go study for no more. In the world of Sandberg, there's room for the Negro genius of that sublime spiritual of peace and an implacable and bitter expression of hatred by a wronged but proud Negro woman, who looks back on her life and some of the people in it from the vantage point of her own funeral.

I am Elizabeth Umstead, dead at 75 years of age, and they are taking me in a polished and silver plated box today, and an undertaker, assured of cash for his work, will supply the straps to let the box down the lean dirt walls, while a quartet of singers assured of cash for their work, sing nearer my God to thee. And a clergyman, also assured of cash for his services, will pronounce the words, dust to dust and ashes to ashes. I am gone from among the two legged moving figures on top of the earth now, and nobody will say my heart is somewhere wrong when I assert I was the most beautiful nigger girl in Northern Indiana, and men wanted my beauty, white men and black men.

They wanted to take it and crush it and taste it, and I learned what they wanted, and I traded on it. I schemed and haggled to get all I could for it, and so I am one nigger girl, who today has a grand funeral with all the servitors paid in spot cash. I learned early, away back in short dresses, when a lawyer took me and used me, same ways you'd use a brass cuspidor or a new horse and buggy, or a swivel chair or anything that gives more life ease for spot cash. He paid $600 cash to me for the keep of the child in my womb and his lawns. And then he went to a revival, saying Jesus knows all about our troubles. Moon,

there was a sinner and wanted Jesus to wash his sins away. He joined the church and stood up one night before hundreds of people and blabbed to them how he used me, had a child by me and paid me $600 cash. And I waited till one night I saw him in the public square and I slashed his face with a leather horse whip, calling all the wild crazy names that came to my tongue to dam him and dam him and dam him for a sneak in the face of God and man. Well, they put me in a grave today, and I leap behind one child, fathered by a white man lawyer, styled since the dollars in the bank, and eight houses I owned as property, and the same way my mother was owned as property by white men in Tennessee. All these

I leap behind me. I, who was the most beautiful nigger girl in Northern Indiana. One of the melodies in Sandberg's bag of songs has to do with a man going around taking names, only he's not a census taker. The song, says Sandberg, has an overtone of a reverie on the riddles of death and the frail permits by which any one generation walks before the mirrors of life. It's called man going around. There's

a man going around taking names. Well, he took my brother's name, and he left my heart in pain. There's a man going around taking names. There's a man going around taking names. Well, he took my sister's name, There's a man going around taking names. Well, he took my sister's name, and he left my heart in pain. There's

a man going around taking names. There's a man going around taking names. Well, he took my father's name, There's a man going around taking names. Well, he took my father's name, and he left my mother in shame. There's a man going around taking names. There's a man going around taking

names. Among many other things, Sandberg is a collector of jokes. It doesn't matter that some are old and others are goofy. They are, as Sandberg himself puts it, worth a second look. There are several varieties, and we sample them in the following order. Country folk. How to do, my fine friend? How do you? Nice looking country you have here. For them that likes it. Live here all your life? Not yet. Which way do the post office go? I don't know.

You don't know much, do you? No, but I ain't lost. Do you have a criminal lawyer in this town? We think so, but we haven't been able to prove it on him. Goofyisms. I took so much medicine. I was sick for a long time after I got well. Me? I had never made a mistake in grammar, but once in my life. And as soon as I've done it, I've seen it. You know who I am? I am Marie Antoinette. Yesterday you said you were Cleopatra. Ah, but that was by another mother. Why on earth are you feeding donuts to that horse? I want to see how many eats before he asks for a cup of coffee. What are

you doing there? Writing a letter to myself. What are you telling yourself in the letter? How do I know I won't get it till tomorrow? Women through the ages. Say, she told me you told her the secret I told you not to tell her. I told her not to tell you I told her. Well, don't tell her I told you she told me. Miss Jones, as you look back over your 99 years, what gives you the greatest satisfaction? Young man, you may tell your reader is the greatest satisfaction is that I haven't got an enemy in the world. That's a beautiful fraud, not an enemy in the world. Yes, sir. I outlive them off. End of comic relief. Sandberg's biography of Abraham

Lincoln is easily the Everest of his personal range. The work runs to a million and a half words, and we close tonight with a few of them from the final pages of the prairie years. The great events of Lincoln's life took place over a hundred years ago, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But in our hearts and minds and memories, those hundred years will come again. A hundred years is a very long time. Oh, yes, sir. A hundred years is a very long time. A hundred years ago. Lincoln was 51 years old. With each year since he had become a grown man, his name and ways and stories about him had been spreading among plain people and their children. So

tall and so boldly, with so peculiar a slouch and so easy a santa, so sad and so haunted looking, so quizzical and comic, is if hiding a lantern that lighted and went out and that he lighted again, like something out of a picture book for children he was. His form of slumping arches and his face of gone suckets were a shape. A great artist had crawled from careless clay. He didn't wear clothes, rather clothes hung upon him as if on a rack to dry or on a loose ladder up a wind -swept chimney. His clothes to keep the children, the son of seem to whisper, he put us on when he was thinking about something else. The year of the big debates, a boy had called out, there goes old Mr. Lincoln, and Lincoln hearing it remarked to a friend. They commenced calling me old when I was scarcely thirty. Often when people called him

old Abe, they meant he had the texture and quaint friendliness of old handmade bibles, old calfskin law books or wagon axles, always willing in storm or stars. A girl skipping along a sidewalk, stumbled on a brick wall and fell backwards just as Lincoln came along. He caught her, lifted her up in his arms, put her gently down and asked, What is your name? Mary Tuft. Well, Mary, when you get home, tell your mother you have rested in Abraham's bosom. Mr. Lincoln liked to tell of a strict judge. He would hang a man for blowing his nose in the street, but he would quash the indictment if it failed to specify which hand he blew it with. On being told of a certain man saying, I can't understand those speeches of Lincoln, he left. There are always some fleas, a dog can't reach.

A lawyer was talking business to Lincoln once at home and suddenly the door opened. Mrs. Lincoln put her head in and snapped the question whether he'd done an errand she told him to do. He looked up quietly, said he'd been busy, but would attend to it as soon as he could. Mrs. Lincoln wailed, she was neglected, abused, insulted. The door slammed and she was gone. The visiting lawyer muttered his surprise. Lincoln laughed. Why, if you knew how much good that little eruption did, if you knew what a relief it was to her, and if you knew her as well as I do, you would be glad she had an opportunity to explode. A cold drizzle of rain was falling one February 11th, when Lincoln and his party of 15 were to leave Springfield on the eight o 'clock at the Great Western Railway Station. Chilly, grey mist, hung the circle of the prairie horizon. A short locomotive stood puffing with a baggage car

and special passenger car coupled on. A thousand people crowded in and around the brick station inside of which Lincoln was standing, and one by one came hundreds of old friends wishing him luck and Godspeed and faces solemn. A path was made for Lincoln from the station to his car. Hands stretched out for one last handshake. He hadn't intended to make a speech, but on the platform of the car as he turned and saw his home people, he took off his hat, stood perfectly still, and raised a hand for silence. My friends, no one not in my situation can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this party. To this place and a kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a

century and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born and one of them is buried. I now leave not knowing when or whether ever I may return. With a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that divine being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in God who can go with me and remain with you and be everywhere for good. Let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To his care commending you as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

Bell's rang. There was a grinding of wheels. The train moved and carried Lincoln away from his hometown and folks. The tears were not yet dry on some faces when the train had faded into the grey, to the east. A hundred years is a very long time. A hundred years is a very long time. A hundred years ago. A hundred years is a very long time. A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago.

A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. A hundred years ago. Television Network.