Excerpt from Address Delivered Before a Joint Convention of the Senate and House of Representatives of the General Court of Massachusetts Mr. President, mr. Speaker, your excellency, sen ators and gentlemen OF the house OF representa tivesz - By your kind request I am here. An invitation from you is to me a command which it is at once an honor and a pleasure to obey. But in thus honoring me you have suddenly imposed upon me a duty which it is not easy worthily to fulfill. You have asked me to address you upon this, the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln; to express for you and to you some of the thoughts which ought to find utterance when, on the completion of the century, we seek to pay fit homage to the memory Of that great man. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.