A Parody Outline of History by Donald Ogden Stewart
page 4 of 104 (03%)
page 4 of 104 (03%)
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feeble "Hurrah!" Childe Roland to the dark tower came.
That was my first meeting with that admirable statesman Woodrow Wilson, and I am happy to state that from that night we became firm friends. When Mr. Wilson was inaugurated in 1913 I called on him at the White House, taking with me some members of my Yale drama class. Each one of us had an edition of the president's admirable "History of the American People", and I am glad to say that he was kind enough to autograph each of the ten volumes for all of us. Early in Mr. Wilson's second term as president, just before the break with Germany, I was sitting in the quiet of my library rereading Browning's "Cristina". When I came to the third stanza I leaped to my feet-- the thing seemed incredible, but here before my eyes was actually Browning's prophetic message to America in regard to the submarine sinkings. "Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! But not so sunk that moments--etc." It is an extraordinary evidence of the man's genius that in 1840 he should have perhaps foreseen prophetically the happenings of seventy-six years later! Not only did Browning seem to know what was bound to happen, but he told us the remedy. I sat right down and wrote to my good friend the president, enclosing a marked copy of the poem. On the sixth of April, 1917, war was declared. May 7, 1912, was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Browning. On that memorable date I was traveling to Ohio at the request of my dear friend Miss Jones to deliver an address |
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