worst of times, age of
foolishness, the epoch of
incredulity

La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom,

it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief,

it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light,

it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope,

it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us,

we had nothing before us,

we were all going direct to Heaven,

we were all going direct the other way –

in short, the period was so far like the present period,

that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil,

in the superlative degree of comparison only.

The opening to A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Mr. Dickens was trying to portray life in the era of the French Revolution.

Something the Brits must have viewed with a bit of relief.

See the French had a law about leaving France to go to the new world.

You had support the government, had to support the King and you had to be a Catholic in good standing with the Church.

The Brits took the line of ‘if you don’t like it here, you can go to America and complain there.’

So those PROTESTing PROTESTants did and when the time came for a British revolution, it was far from home.

In France, they kept all the rabble rousers home and when they had their revolution it was in the front yard.

Mr. Dickens was writing a little more than 50 years after the events of revolution in France.

Here is almost 225 years later.

And it is the worst of times …

The age of foolishness …

The epoch of incredulity …

The season of Darkness …

The winter of despair …

Nothing before us …

We were all going direct not to Heaven, but the other way …

Still …

Remember, the barricade blocks the street but opens the way.

PS: By chance I put this haiku together from the book and was thinking about a picture to use and I checked my Thurber database to see that this drawing with the caption, See you at the barricades, Mr. Whitsonby! was first published in the New Yorker Magazine on February 15, 1936. 90 years ago today! And as we all remember, to the barricades is the motto of the French Revolution or as history has it, La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la voie! or The barricade blocks the street but opens the way.

way is plain, peaceful,
generous, just – if followed
God forever bless

According to Wikipedia, The 1862 State of the Union Address was written by the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and delivered to the 37th United States Congress, on Monday, December 1, 1862, amid the ongoing American Civil War.

This address was Lincoln’s longest State of the Union Address, consisting of 8,385 words.

In the closing paragraphs of this address, Lincoln penned words which have been remembered and quoted frequently by presidents and other American political figures. Lincoln’s concluding remarks were as follows:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.

As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history.

We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.

No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us.

The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.

We say we are for the Union.

The world will not forget that we say this.

We know how to save the Union.

The world knows we do know how to save it.

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility.

In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.

Other means may succeed; this could not fail.

The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just — a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.

Can’t pass by Mr. Lincoln on his birthday.

It used to be a big day.

Probably still should be.

More so not that other people have elevated the office of President of the United States.

But that other people have demonstrated the depths to which the office can sink.

I think of what Alistair Cooke wrote about Mr. Lincoln in his book, America:

“It is difficult, and in some quarters thought to be almost tasteless, to talk sense about Lincoln.

But we must try.

For the holy image and the living man were very far apart, and keeping them so does no service either to Lincoln or to the art of government.

Like all strong characters, he was well hated, and like most frontiersmen who have come to high office—like Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson—he was ridiculed for his directness and country manners.

The London Times called him “the Baboon.”

Lincoln had a gangling gait, a disturbing fondness for rough stories, and a maddening habit of being, in a kind of tooth-sucking way, wiser and sharper than you. (To make it worse, most of the time he was.)”

On the 100th anniversary of Mr. Lincoln’s birth, biographer Ida Tarbell spoke at the University of Michigan on the topic, “Abraham Lincoln : an address the Centennial anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.”

Ms. Tarbell’s address was part of 1908-1909 schedule of speakers arranged by the Students’ Lecture Association of the University of Michigan.

I was fascinated to see the Hon. W. Bourke Cockran also on the list.

He is the Bourke Cockran in this oft told story of Mr. Churchill … “Adlai Stevenson, himself a notable speaker, often reminisced about his last meeting with Churchill. I asked him on whom or what he had based his oratorical style. Churchill replied, “It was an American statesman who inspired me and taught me how to use every note of the human voice like an organ.” Winston then to my amazement started to quote long excerpts from Bourke Cockran’s speeches of 60 years before. “He was my model,” Churchill said. “I learned from him how to hold thousands in thrall.”

It must have been an interesting lecture to attend.

Ms. Tarbell spoke in University Hall, a hall that held 2500 people in a building that stood where Angell Hall now stands on the UofM campus.

She was introduced by the President of the University, James Angell and gave a lecture that, as stated in The Michigan Daily account, was made by the “probably the best informed person living in regard to Lincoln.”

Her final words on the subject?

It is doubtful if this country, if any country, has produced a man so worthy of our study and our following as is Abraham Lincoln.

Who indeed is there so fit to guide us in that highest of tasks – the giving of service?

Whoever saturated himself so with his subject?

Whoever trusted more utterly to the integrity of his logic, and to the appeal for the sense of human justice?

​Whoever put aside with more contempt all the tricks of his trade – appeals to emotion simply to stir emotion, wit simply to arouse a laugh, subterfuges and evasion to escape valid objection?

Whoever handled with more honesty and respect his tasks?

Whoever struggled harder to understand not only with his head but with his heart and understanding, wrestled more to make others understand?

​Whoever looked more deeply, more gently, into the hearts of men, and having looked, put into more moving words what he had seen?
​
He has no parallel.

He stands in a towering lonely figure – a man who, by the persistent and reverential following of his own highest instincts, unaided, raised himself from the soil to place of the First American.

Now, 217 years after Mr. Lincoln’s birth … well, its beyond belief isn’t it.