A Moment's Pause

I have to tell this story before doing anything else, dear reader.


In class recently we read various historical documents and examined them as pieces of writing only. How does Thomas Jefferson decide to open the Declaration of Independence? What rhetorical techniques does Martin Luther King, Jr. use in his "I Have a Dream" speech? It's instructive sometimes for students to realize that EVERY writer grapples with a beginning--how do I start this sucker? What do I do next?.

In lieu of the regular 250-word response analysis paper that they usually have to do, I offered the option of memorizing and reciting the Gettysburg Address to the class. It's short, I said. It won't take long. It'll be fun. "Define fun," somebody said. I've never tried this before, and you might say it's not a writing assignment and it's more like what a junior high class would do. But I put it out there anyway.

Only one student took me up on it, a young woman of soft-spoken demeanor, with freckles and glasses. A sweet girl and one I have trouble hearing sometimes. Further from Abraham Lincoln you probably couldn't get.

Well anyway, she had to put it off for one class because she didn't feel prepared. But she came in the next day ready to go. I made her stand up and she looked scared, but very brave. "Four score and seven years ago," she began. No eyes left the girl.

At first I think the students were impressed that she had done the memorization and so they listened. But as it went by, the speech itself took hold. She in her quiet careful voice held them in rapt attention. Lincoln's words came through this girl, simple and eloquent and moving. "All men are created equal," she said and we felt the truth and hope of that statement [those words borrowed by AL from TJ of course] "The world will little note nor long remember," she said, and of course those words are wrong. The world still remembers and we did too.

I don't remember a time of such great poignance in my class. When she finished, the ending moved us all. "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. "
Our ovation was long and loud and sincere.

Hats off to her.