Preface: Following the previous article, I finished typing around four o'clock and was about to send it when I received a notification. The elder has passed away. 🕯️🕯️🕯️
Although I did not live in his era, he has been a part of my life for the past ten years. Looking back at those widely spread clips, one particular segment left a deep impression on me ──
...
"Do you know who said this?" a student interrupted him.
"Of course, how could I not know?" he retorted, "This was said by the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, in his famous Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863."
"Now let me ask you a question," he posed a question to the audience, "Who among you can recite the entire speech?"
Before the student could answer, he began reciting the Gettysburg Address in English, as if the Mayor of Shanghai had transformed into an actor in a play about the American Civil War. With his excellent speaking skills - a good grasp of pace and intonation - he portrayed President Lincoln, infusing each word and sentence with meaning and emotion.
"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."
── "The Gettysburg Address" by Abraham Lincoln
Eighty-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."
── "The Gettysburg Address" by Abraham Lincoln
It began here and ended here. This is beyond words.