Happy Birthday, President Lincoln

OK, it's a bit complicated, but here's the story.  I'm walking to school with Felix the other day and apropos of nothing he asks "What does 'perish' mean?"  ("Uh oh," I thought to myself.)  "It means to die or disappear."  Pause, pause.  "What does it mean to 'perish from the earth'?"  ("Perish from the earth?  Where have I heard that before?")  "Like the dinosaurs, that all of them are dead forever."  This seemed to satisfy him.

On the way home, just me and the Gid, I realized where I'd heard that phrase:  the final lines of the Gettysburg Address.  Allow me:

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 so 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.

And sure enough, this is where he got it.  As you may recall from my posting on our trip to Hawaii, we gave Felix an mp3 player and headphones, noting that "With books you can at least judge them by their covers. With audiobooks, who knows? I hope it's good for you, whatever it is you're listening to so intently."  One of those books was Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln, a read-along version, book and CD, I'd borrowed from the library intending to read with him on the trip.  This plan never came to fruition--vacation plans, or rather plans for vacation, rarely do--and having returned home I took back the item.  But it did not occur to me to erase the mp3 file still on his player, and apparently, having listened to Ozma of Oz, some Just So Stories, Amelia Bedelia, and quite a lot else, he arrived at this.

Truth be told, you often can judge a book by its cover, at least if you take the trouble to look at it.  I admit I didn't, at least not closely enough to notice the subtitle, "The Story of the Gettysburg Address."  I picked this up for Felix assuming it contained a few short, humorous tales about Lincoln and about why he was so great.  You know, the "Honest Abe" one about him walking miles to return a few pennies to a short-changed customer, that kind of thing.  It did not occur to me that it would discuss the Battle of Gettysburg--bloodiest battle of that most bloody of wars--or Lincoln's leaving his son's sickbed to travel to that place, or the speech itself, which, though elevating, contains a good deal about death and the dead.

Ah well, there's no undoing it now:  things have a way of sticking with Felix.  Indeed, the only way is forward:  I'm going to make him memorize the Address, that's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to make sure he understands it, too.  Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln, and thank you again for your words.