AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN
life and during the whole three hours not one word concerning the politics of the state. I understood that he had sent for me in order to say farewell to one for whom he felt a sympathy and to whom he had shown a friendship. If there was anything of a personal character which he would have liked to have accomplished he never mentioned the subject, and so displayed a delicacy of which few men would have been capable.
On Decoration Day, the 30th, Roosevelt made an address at Gettysburg from a platform near the spot where Lincoln had spoken. It was the first time he had ever been upon that field. Mrs. Roosevelt and their little daughter, Ethel, came with him and it became my duty to look after and endeavor to entertain the young lady, a hearty and agreeable little girl, who afterward wrote to me a pretty note. It rained throughout the entire ceremonies, but the people stood under their umbrellas and listened. The necessity of introducing the President gave me the opportunity to express my own thought concerning the significance of that decisive battle and I said:
The Battle of Gettysburg, momentous in its exhibition of military force and skill, tremendous in its destruction of human life, had consequences which in their effect upon the race are limitless. As the seeds of the cockle are sown with the wheat, so in the constitution adopted by the fathers in 1787 lay the germs of an inevitable struggle. Two antagonistic forces grew in vigor and strength, side by side, in one household, and, like Ormuzd and Ahriman, they must strive for the mastery. Upon this field the struggle came to a determination and the issue between them was here decided with cannon and musket. The rebellion was undertaken by the followers of the doctrines of Calhoun and Davis with the purpose to rend the nation asunder and break it into fragments. Alas for the futility of the expectations of men! The Lord who holds the peoples in the hollow of his hand, and who, since the dawn of history, has taken them up by turns in the search for one fit for broad domination, did not forsake us. The extraordinary powers exercised for the maintenance of the national life in that dire time of war became fixed
