There's a certain power derived from spending the few moments necessary
to memorize something, then expressing it with your own voice.

I just re-read then recited Lincoln's Gettysburg address.

Its succinct and forceful statement applies to nearly every battle in
every war on every continent that our brave soldiers have fought. They
offered and often gave their lives that we might prosper in peace here at
home.

Three short paragraphs ---
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

"Four score 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.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or
any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a
great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate --
we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."



Lloyd