If you know a great man in Philadelphia and you
should meet him to-morrow, you would say,
``How are you, Sam?'' or ``Good morning, Jim.''
Of course you would. That is just what you would
do.
One of my soldiers in the Civil War had been
sentenced to death, and I went up to the White
House in Washington--sent there for the first
time in my life to see the President. I went
into the waiting-room and sat down with a lot
of others on the benches, and the secretary asked
one after another to tell him what they wanted.
After the secretary had been through the line,
he went in, and then came back to the door and
motioned for me. I went up to that anteroom,
and the secretary said: ``That is the President's
door right over there. Just rap on it and go
right in.'' I never was so taken aback, friends,
in all my life, never. The secretary himself made
it worse for me, because he had told me how to
go in and then went out another door to the
left and shut that. There I was, in the hallway
by myself before the President of the United
States of America's door. I had been on fields of
battle, where the shells did sometimes shriek and
the bullets did sometimes hit me, but I always
wanted to run.
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