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Show lfiTI0Hl PEN Some Thou:" '3 on the Gettysburg Gettys-burg Oration, Well Described as Immortal. THE FACT that President Wilson writes his messages in shorthand and then transcribes his notes on a typewriter has given rise to some speculation spec-ulation as to whether this contributes contrib-utes to the style of his state papers. The variety of methods used by authors au-thors makes it unsafe to dogmatize on the subject. But that the writing out of his messages by hand benefits the style cannot be doubted. While shorthand short-hand suggests speed, it does not necessarily nec-essarily imply it when the writer is committing his own thoughts to paper. He might linger as long over a pothook pot-hook as over an ordinary character. But the writer who uses a pen feels a certain inspiration in it, and as he Writes various synonyms come trooping troop-ing through his mind and he has the time to select the one that expresses his meaning with the greatest nicety, Bays the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. A magazine writer, in discussing the president's method, suggests that when one operates a typewriter the cessation of the click of the machine interrupts the continuity of the thought. This disadvantage is not so obvious as that arising from the fact that the speed of the typewriter precludes pre-cludes careful selection of synonyms. But either method of writing is preferable pre-ferable to dictation, for dictation causes prolixity and the speed prevents pre-vents fine discrimination in the use of words. It is also responsible for many extreme utterances. The famous letter General Egan wrote about General Gen-eral Miles affords an illustration. Much of its heat was generated In the process of dictation. Lincoln's Gettysburg add-ess is esteemed es-teemed a model of conciseness. It was the result of a lifelong habit of composition. As a boy Lincoln had neither slate nor scratchpad. He wrote on a shingle with a piece of charcoal. The only way he could erase his writing was by shaving the shingle. We have the testimony of one of the telegraphers in the war department that President Lincoln, when composing compos-ing telegram, whispered it over to himself before committing it to paper. The telegrapher knew nothing of the shingle, but we may trace the habits of the man to hir childhood. Is it too much to argue that had Mr. Lincoln been( accustomed to dictating to a stenographer we might have never had the Gettysburg classic? And is it not possible that the limited library of the Lincoln boy proved a blessing to him? It was composed of the very best books in our language and he read and reread them and thou wrote the essence of them on his shi.iele and told them to his playmates in his own language. The self-education of Lincoln is one of the marvels of history. |