The Charlotte News
Wednesday, August 22, 1956
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the Republican national convention in San Francisco that the President had talked politics this date with RNC chairman Leonard Hall, as the convention was preparing to renominate the President for a second term. Mr. Hall left the conference saying that the President hoped it would be an open convention, that Vice-President Nixon was still "perfectly acceptable" as his running mate, and that he would not discuss any other nominees for the vice-presidency. Mr. Nixon had flown to his hometown of Whittier, California, where his 77-year old father, Frank, was reported to be critically ill. The delegates appeared ready to renominate Mr. Nixon, and Mr. Hall said that for the moment, the convention would go ahead as planned, despite the Vice-President's family emergency. He said that he could not say whether the illness might interfere with the Vice-President's plans to make an acceptance speech the following night at the conclusion of the convention. The President had talked to Mr. Nixon by telephone, expressing wishes for the quick recovery of his father. Mr. Hall also indicated that a rule adopted the previous day would bar nominations by acclamation and that roll calls would take place for both the presidential and vice-presidential nominations, and that under convention rules, anyone could be nominated and delegates were free to cast votes for others than Mr. Nixon, even if Mr. Nixon was the only candidate placed in nomination for the second spot.
Mr. Nixon's father had been stricken in the wee hours of the morning with an abdominal ailment and his physician had said that it was doubtful that he would survive. Mr. Nixon, his wife and his brother Donald and his wife, had left at once from the convention by car for the elder Mr. Nixon's home in Whittier. The Vice-President said that they would not know how long they would stay there until they talked to the doctor, that they would stay at least through the day and overnight, and if conditions permitted, would return to the convention the following afternoon. He appeared drawn and slightly nervous, and expressed concern over his father's condition, indicating that the doctor had described it as critical, that it could be fatal or that he could hang on for a few days.
Determined objections apparently stood in the way this date of Harold Stassen's request to address the convention before it nominated a vice-presidential candidate. Senator William Jenner of Indiana indicated that Mr. Stassen would not get the chance to talk, that if no one else objected, he would. Representative Joseph Martin of Massachusetts, chairman of the convention, said that he had heard that there would be plenty of objections to the request of Mr. Stassen to speak. Mr. Nixon had urged that he be allowed to speak. Mr. Stassen was not a delegate and it would require unanimous consent of the convention for him to speak. Senator Edward Martin of Pennsylvania said in a separate interview that he was very strongly opposed to Mr. Stassen speaking to the convention, that it had been moving so smoothly that he sincerely hoped he would not be permitted to do so.
Saul Pett of the Associated Press reports that the Republican convention should not be accused of being dominated by Madison Avenue, as the latter might sue because advertising and public relations experts who were helping the Republicans could not be too happy with the way the convention was proceeding so far. "As a production, the show needs more work, more polish, better timing. It just isn't ready yet for big-time television." (Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan, in attendance as a delegate, might thus note that he was one of the not-ready-for-primetime players.) Mr. Pett finds that the women had talked too long and the Cabinet members had been practically talking to themselves while being upstaged by the President's arrival in San Francisco. He had liked, however, the role of former President Hoover, who had been greeted the previous night by five minutes of warm applause and dancing signs which read, "We Love You, Mr. Hoover". It had been the first big emotional moment of the convention. Four years earlier, the former President had told the Republicans that it was probably the last time he would address them at a convention, but he was back, now at age 82, making quiet little jokes about the actress who made six tearful farewell appearances. (Mr. Hoover, in fact, would not make his final appearance at a Republican convention until 1960, although he would send a message to the 1964 convention, three months before his death.) He had stood blinking under the lights, with his thinning hair a yellow-white, his eyes lost under wispy white brows, a small wry smile playing over his eyes, making one think of a "benign, blonde Buddha." He thanked the delegates, but had no tears or break in his voice, read from the teleprompter in his own slow, deliberate pace, tolerating the applause but rarely looking up. After his speech, the women had taken over, and as each came to the podium, she was followed by a girl in white carrying a sign announcing the subject, with the emcee saying, "And what words do you have for us, Francis?" The lady speaker would then say, "My word is most beautiful—peace." And while she talked of peace, the girl held up a sign saying, "Peace." And the emcee said… When all of the speeches were completed, the girls suddenly flipped the signs over and all of the signs, using the first letters of each speaker's subject, spelled "Republican women". He finds that it was definitely not a slick Madison Avenue job, that it reminded him of a jazzy pageant they had put on in the seventh grade, in which one boy had come dressed as a book symbolizing "knowledge" and a girl had dressed as a tree symbolizing "nature", and he had been a big black chunk of coal, representing "power". "The reviewers panned that one, too." The Cabinet members had not made it onto television because the network switched from the convention, soon after the Cabinet members began talking, to the arrival of the President's plane and his drive downtown to his hotel. The delegates began to thin out, probably because they wanted to greet the President. The band had come in too soon on the introduction of Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, and had to be stopped and then started too soon again. Other Cabinet members were preempted entirely by the arrival of the President to the city.
The convention schedule for this date is printed, with an address scheduled by former New York Governor Thomas Dewey, the Republican presidential nominee in 1944 and 1948, the roll call of the states to nominate the presidential candidate and to vote for those candidates, followed by the roll call for the vice-presidential candidates and votes, and then the appointment of committees to notify nominees for the presidency and vice-presidency.
In Libertyville, Ill., Adlai Stevenson this date labeled a Republican promise in its platform of tax cuts as just "so much election talk". Mr. Stevenson was completing plans for a flying tour of the country the following week, to lay the groundwork for a strenuous campaign. He said the tax-cut promise was a "contradiction" of the President's own position that he was against tax cuts and favored instead applying any surplus revenue toward retirement of the public debt. He said he was perplexed that the convention would make the promise when the President had said repeatedly he was against a tax-cut. He criticized the platform committee chairman, Senator Prescott Bush, for his emphasis on a balanced budget, indicating that the convention had applauded loudest when the Senator had said that they had balanced the budget, communicating an accurate reflection of the interests which the Republican leaders had most in mind, "not the education of our children, not a fair break for farmers, not the growing menace of Communism in the world, not America's waning influence—but a balanced budget. And Senator Bush did not say that they succeeded in balancing the budget this year only by postponing necessary defense expenditures until after next year—after the election. Nor did he say that under Truman the national debt was reduced by 12 billion, while under Eisenhower it has been increased by 13 billions in four years." Mr. Stevenson had met with newsmen as he prepared for a meeting with his campaign manager, James Finnegan, and DNC chairman Paul Butler, to go over details for his trip the following week with running mate, Senator Estes Kefauver. The Senator and his family, meanwhile, were vacationing in Blowing Rock, N.C.
In London, a medium bomber with two Americans aboard had vanished this date on a flight from Iceland to Scotland, and an alert had been broadcast to all ships on the route in the belief that the plane had crashed in the sea. The converted B-26 was one of 20 being ferried by a private firm out of Burbank, Calif., destined for the French Air Force. No signal from the plane had been received since its takeoff from Iceland early this date.
In Washington, a Navy spokesman confirmed this date that an F8U-1 Crusader had probably set a new speed record for American combat planes in a flight over California the previous day, the spokesman declining to specify the exact speed. Marvin Miles of the Los Angeles Times had said that it ranged between 1,000 and 1,050 mph, and had made several runs over the measured course at the Naval Ordnance Test Center at China Lake. The Navy identified the pilot as Commander Robert Windsor. The Navy spokesman said that the exact speed would likely be announced at the forthcoming National Air Show at Oklahoma City, a similar combat plane record of 822.135 mph having previously been announced at that show, achieved early in the year by an Air Force F-100.
In Greenville, S.C., the FBI had announced this date that a 35-year old Greenville man had been arrested on a charge of using the mails to attempt to collect a ransom in the New York kidnaping of an infant the prior July 4, which had not yet been solved. The FBI said a ransom note had been sent to the infant's mother on Long Island demanding $10,000 for the release of the baby, which had been four weeks old when kidnaped from the backyard of his home. The arrested man was an unemployed roofer and tree surgeon who was married and had three children. The FBI spokesperson in Charlotte said that the note had instructed the infant's mother to register at a Greenville hotel under a false name and to await further instructions. Following a contact in Greenville, arrangements had been made for the man to pick up the money late the previous night. He was charged in a complaint with knowingly depositing in the mail a communication demanding money for the release of the kidnap victim.
In Charlotte, the City Council had voted this date to discontinue the ban on Sunday evening movies and sporting events, taking a vote by Mayor Philip Van Every to break a tie and put across the motion introduced by former Mayor Herbert Baxter. Although strong opposition had been voiced in the past by local ministers and other individuals, no objections had been heard this date. The motion would allow shows and sporting events to run continuously after 1:30 p.m. on Sundays.
Julian Scheer of The News
reports of the City Council having discussed many things this date,
streets, sewers, zoning, contracts, but most of all, of women and
wives and Hoover and hot rods. Mayor Van Every had been perplexed
about a letter he had received the previous day from a student asking
him to help find the student a wife, the Mayor wondering why he had
written to him, with Councilwoman Martha Evans explaining that it was
simple, because he knew the Mayor had a "homemade agency",
the Mayor having three unmarried daughters. There had also been much
discussion on the locale of the proposed medical center, and a
committee on the subject indicated it would report to the Council in
two weeks, with one member indicating that it was about time as they
had been working on the problem for more than a year and that they
also had the money, to which Mrs. Evans commented that she hated to
have money and not spend it. Mr. Baxter had noted the "unprecedented"
growth of the community, that in 1948, they had 37,000 cars and the
previous year, they had 90,000, that Herbert Hoover had been the man
who had said in 1928
"The Bad Seed" would shortly premiere in mid-September. Don't be misled by that "adults only" label, begging the query as to how a story centering on a young girl could be so considered, even by the Chicago Police Commission. They showed it on tv during our childhood and just about all of our peers saw it. It was even on in the afternoon. Only a few turned out warped, and it could have been from so many variables otherwise, from home life to immediate environs outside the home, that it likely did not derive from viewing of any movie or television fare, unless a young person developed some unusual and unhealthy preoccupation with that little boy's shooooes. You know you did it, little girl.
On the editorial page, "Civil Rights: The GOP's Unpicked Plum" indicates that Republicans agreed with Democrats that the Supreme Court could get along without their advice and endorsement, a position which was to their credit or to the credit of the President, who reportedly had demanded a reasonable platform plank regarding Brown v. Board of Education. Regardless of why it had occurred, the predictions of Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois and other Northern Republicans that there would be a resounding endorsement of the decision had fallen flat, with the civil rights plank mimicking the Court's own call in its 1955 implementing decision for desegregation "with all deliberate speed". It did not attempt to create the illusion that the party would take a hand in determining that speed or otherwise meddle in the Court's affairs. The Republicans had also joined the Democrats in rejecting the idea of the use of force or violence by any group or agency to implement or prevent desegregation and adopted the pregnant platitude that "true progress" in racial reforms could be attained through "intelligent study, understanding and good will."
The attitude, it finds, was as surprising as it was satisfying, that there were three good reasons why Republicans could have been expected to give three or more cheers for Brown. First, the Democrats had not done so, second, the decision had been handed down during a Republican Administration, and third, the Republicans were not counting on the South's electoral votes to help them win in November. The Republicans had a golden opportunity to win back from the Democrats the millions of black voters attracted by the economic betterment enjoyed during the New Deal. It finds that an extreme platform appeal would have been irresponsible, but then allows that most platform appeals were irresponsible. All indications were that it had been the President's personal decision to produce a plank which was moderate, as a Cabinet faction had failed earlier to convince him that it would be wise to submit an extreme civil rights program to Congress. It finds both decisions by the President commendable in their leadership, and suggests that there would be benefits from them.
Restraint on the issue would aid Republican efforts to become a national party by increasing its strength in the South, and would preserve the domestic calm on which the party counted heavily in its bid for re-election. To say that both parties had exercised some wisdom in their civil rights planks, however, was not to say that the campaign ahead would be founded on common sense. It suggests that in discussing platforms, it was always wise to remember that they were binding on nobody, particularly on campaign orators.
"Moderation, Motherhood, Flag, Country" finds that the magic of moderation was being dimmed by overusage, as one could not run at present for dogcatcher without identifying oneself as a moderate of one sort or another, a claim taken up by every point on the socio-political spectrum.
Within the previous few months, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had been described by American Communists as a Russian moderate. There had also been much ado in the South about moderation from both segregationists and integrationists. The conservative Democrat from Ohio, Governor Frank Lausche, had referred to his own political moderation, as had the liberal Republican Governor, Christian Herter of Massachusetts. They were now being told by the accredited pundits that moderation was to be the theme of the coming presidential campaign between the President and Adlai Stevenson, one columnist indicating that it would be "the battle of the moderates", which it finds an uninspiring tagline for a political contest.
It was even beginning to appear that moderation had joined the magic trio of motherhood, flag and country about which the Fourth of July orators could roll their eyes virtuously when the spirit moved them.
There was much to be said for moderation and it admits that the column had written heavy-breathing prose on the subject, that reasonable, tempered views were needed in all fields of endeavor and that it would go to bat for the real moderates whenever they needed reinforcements. But it protests vigorously the sanctification of the term or any mass application of it in American politics. The best truth, it asserts, did not always lie in moderation at all, for everyone did not think and hope on a lofty plane.
It offers as example an account of the previous day from the Associated Press, regarding how headhunters had massacred 28 Papuans in northern New Guinea. "A moderate, medium view might be that the natives out there certainly ought not to hunt too many heads. An extreme opinion would demand that they hunt none at all."
"Into Each Drought a Little Rain Must…" tells of having greeted the rain in Charlotte, providing quite a lot of detail on the subject, concluding: "The man went out and stood in the rain and he thought that the lizard—if the lizard drank water—had a plenty." You may determine on your own just how the lizard got into the act.
Edward P. Morgan, in an ABC broadcast, titled in print, "Is Baby-Kissing on the Way Out?" indicates that sometimes he wondered about the efficacy of higher education, as no sooner than Harry Truman had received an honorary degree from Oxford University, he had refused to kiss babies, saying that it was not sanitary for the babies. He suggests that no practicing politician would be fooled by that thinly-disguised diplomatic after-thought, that the plain truth was that babies were messy, were inclined to have bubbles or pablum on their chins and that candidates, no matter how hard-pressed, were inclined to shy away from them if possible, particularly since they could not vote.
He suggests that Mr. Truman's eschewing of the practice would be interpreted by some as a final decision by him to remain the elder statesman of the party and not return to the arena of active politics, but Mr. Morgan finds that it could signify the exact opposite, that Mr. Truman might well find himself leading a long overdue revolt against silliness on the hustings.
He suggests that if baby-kissing was out, the initiation of a candidate into an Indian tribe might be the next traditional practice to be eliminated, followed by participation in folk-dancing and the eating of over-seasoned potato salad at political picnics. The miscellaneous headgear, lodge costumes, homemade pickles, hand-initialed doilies and onyx ink wells which were foisted on an aspirant for office might also become things of the past.
But baby-kissing had been out for some time, as he had yet to see any of a number of candidates provide a real four-square smack on the cheek of any little shaver. He concludes that Mr. Truman might have initiated a refreshing political reform but that he was not "squirrel-headed enough to make his ukase against baby-kissing inviolate. After all he might be a grandfather by and by."
Drew Pearson, in San Francisco, indicates that Harold Stassen had maintained in secret most of the names and the correspondence he had exchanged with anonymous opponents of Vice-President Nixon's renomination, but the column had obtained some of them, reprinting one telegram Mr. Stassen had sent to motion picture producer Louis De Rochemont, formerly associated with Henry Luce in the "Time Marches On" series. Mr. Stassen had told him that developments were favorable but that the situation continued to be difficult and that he would welcome his counsel on the manner of carrying forward in the ensuing days, especially on the public side, that he was confident of the President's mind continuing to be open regarding the vice-presidential question and believed that if Governor Christian Herter was nominated, the President would be pleased to have him as his running mate. He asked whether Mr. De Rochemont would consider the announcement of 100 Americans from Who's Who who believed that the party ought nominate Mr. Herter to be an important move.
Another contributor to Mr. Stassen's "dump-Dick" campaign was H. F. Johnson of the Johnson Wax Co. of Racine, Wisc., to whom Mr. Stassen had telegraphed that he had received his letter and that his understanding was correct. Nicholas Roosevelt, cousin of former President Theodore Roosevelt and former minister to Hungary, had been another contributor, to whom Mr. Stassen had wired that his forthright and vigorous words had stirred him deeply. To Helen Ames Lett, another contributor, Mr. Stassen had telegraphed that it was late but not too late and very important for the country that they succeed. Other contributors had included Frank Blum & Son of Pittsburgh, Johnson & Son of Racine, and A. D. Strong Co. of Minneapolis. Mr. Pearson notes that Bailey Vinson of Tulsa, who had contributed $1,000 to the effort, had been rejected as the Republican national committeeman from Oklahoma on the first day the committee had met in San Francisco. Mr. Vinson had been revealed by the column as pressuring the Interior Department to permit him to drill for oil on a wildlife refuge in North Dakota, an area where no drilling had been permitted under the Democrats.
He indicates that regardless of the bickering over Mr. Nixon, there was general unanimity that Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut had not shone as chairman of the resolutions committee, having exerted railroading tactics which had been overridden when it came to adopting the Republican platform committee's recommendations. Sumner Pike, delegate from Maine who had served in both the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations, had said that he agreed with former Assistant Secretary of State Thruston Morton, that what they adopted would be scrutinized and examined by their opponents carefully, and for that reason, proposed that they first see in print what they were passing rather than merely acting on the oral reading of the platform by Senator Bush, who had read sections of the platform aloud and asked for an immediate vote without delegates being given the chance to study the proposed sections, indicating that they had not printed the platform for security reasons. Congressman John Phillips of California had agreed with Mr. Pike. Senator Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts also stated that he found it embarrassing to pass on matters of such importance without knowing exactly what it was they were approving. As a result, the resolutions committee had agreed that the platform would be mimeographed and that the delegates would have a chance to study it the following day before a final vote.
Bernard Shanley, the President's appointments secretary, had to be pressured to go to the airport to meet Vice-President Nixon in San Francisco, as Mr. Shanley was Mr. Stassen's former campaign manager and did not wish to meet Mr. Nixon.
Marquis Childs, in San Francisco, indicates that ever since 1940, when the two party conventions were pitted against the backdrop of war or threat of war, the bombast and oratorical flourish of the conventions had little or nothing to do with the world situation. In the summer of 1940, when the Republicans had met in Philadelphia, all of Western Europe had already collapsed before Hitler's blitzkrieg and it remained doubtful whether Britain, left virtually alone, could stand. Yet, for the delegates at the Republican convention shouting for Wendell Willkie, the war might as well have been occurring on the moon. Meanwhile, the Democrats in Chicago had grudgingly accepted a third term for President Roosevelt.
Four years later, the country was completely absorbed in World War II and both of the conventions and the election campaign which followed appeared irrelevant, as a tired, sick FDR forced himself beyond his strength, and Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, as the Republican nominee, could not break through the American preoccupation with winning the war.
By 1948, the cold war had begun, with the growing threat of open Communist aggression in Europe. In 1952, the Korean War had taken a large toll of American casualties, having begun in late June, 1950, and the Communist Chinese had intervened subsequently, with the threat of an Asia-wide conflict looming.
Mr. Childs finds 1956 to be no exception to the rule. Secretary of State Dulles was presently in London trying to compromise the dispute between France and Britain on the one hand and Egypt on the other, following Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal on July 26. While war over the canal might be averted, the danger of a conflict in the Middle East as a result of the growing Arab-Israeli hostility was great. Yet had come the irrelevance of political compromises, promises and proposals held out to the voters by both parties at their conventions. The wordy foreign policy plank in the Democratic platform promised almost everything to everybody, proposing the peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute while offering arms to Israel. Regarding Communist China, with European and Asian opinion increasingly opposed to the U.S. position, the platform had taken a rigid stand against admission of Communist China to the U.N. and in favor of continued support of Nationalist China.
While platform pledges meant little, such pledges would tie the hands of a Democratic president and his secretary of state in the face of pressures which were certain to be applied with respect to China once the election was over. The Democratic platform had a "foolish reference" to the Republican Administration "fraternizing" with the Communists. It thus had rejected most of the counsel of the party's able advisers on foreign policy, such as Chester Bowles, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze. The foreign policy plank would have included even more damaging statements had it not been for the last-minute changes eliminating the call for higher tariffs to protect the South's new textile industry.
The Republican platform in its final form was somewhat more moderate on foreign policy, since the Administration had the sobering responsibility for making the perilous decisions which would determine whether there would be peace or war. They could revel in complete irresponsibility four years earlier when, with Mr. Dulles directing the framing of the plank, they had accused the Democrats of every high crime and misdemeanor in the foreign policy area. The Republicans, this time, would campaign on peace and prosperity, conveniently ignoring the threat of war in the Middle East and the Suez crisis, which was at least a dark spot on the Administration's record, with some predicting that it would blemish Republican chances in the fall. To at least one observer, however, it appeared likely to have the opposite effect, with a soldier-statesman in the White House possessing experience and background being promoted as factors which would lead the nation through the crisis and maintain the peace. And even if he were to fail in that endeavor, the argument would run that there was no one more qualified than the President to try to limit the conflict and protect American interests, similar to the argument in 1944 that the country should not change horses in the middle of the stream.
Mr. Childs concludes that the politics of irrelevant promises might be a luxury which the country could still afford, but with its world responsibility in the struggle with Communism, it had to seem to sensible men that the time for such self-delusion had long passed, as for the previous 16 years, the political promises had quickly been belied by the grim realities of world events.
Doris Fleeson, in San Francisco, indicates that Democrats looked upon politics as an art to be practiced while Republicans regarded it as a status to be maintained. The 1956 convention supported those traditional definitions of the differences between the two parties.
All of the previous week in Chicago, the Democrats had practiced their art, openly and noisily, with Republicans having to bone up on their words to achieve more vividly damaging attacks on the Stevenson-Kefauver ticket than some Democrats had made, including those by the only living former Democratic President, Harry Truman. Delegates to that convention had engaged in unpredictable behavior, such as the runaway and very nearly successful effort to make Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts the vice-presidential nominee.
In San Francisco, at the Republican convention, the risk was always less that such behavior would occur, with Harold Stassen representing misgivings by industrial and business interests, chiefly in the East, regarding the prospect that the death of the President might eventually vault Vice-President Nixon into the presidency. But all of the evidence was that the Republican Party organization wanted Mr. Nixon on the ticket again, passing up repeated opportunities to consider warnings that he was too controversial to be on a minority party ticket headed by an elderly candidate with a medical history.
She suggests that a good deal would be written about the entire lack of genuine political discussion in San Francisco and the long vaudeville shows prepared chiefly for the benefit of the television audience. The same wits who had so much fun in Chicago with former President Truman, such as Governor of Kentucky Happy Chandler and the keynote speaker, Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee, were in San Francisco and had to make a living somehow. If Republicans refused to behave like political animals, the political reporters had to make due note of it.
One veteran observer summed the situation by indicating that either former President Truman or Mr. Stassen was going to come out of the election as a prophet. The Democrats had not listened to Mr. Truman telling them that Mr. Stevenson could not win the election, and Mr. Stassen was being ignored regarding his doubts about Mr. Nixon. Privately, Republicans conceded that the Democrats had nominated their strongest ticket, and were impressed by the ease with which Mr. Stevenson had resisted the attempt of Mr. Truman to obtain the nomination instead for Governor Averell Harriman, and had done so without exposing himself. They realized that the open look of the vice-presidential nomination had been a fine gesture to public relations. Some were also chary about relying too much on the polls, as the Gallup poll had already awarded the election to the Republican ticket with ease, but which could turn out to be their worst enemy, as one Midwestern delegate had declared, because it made the party complacent.
A letter writer from High Point
suggests that it might be stretching things too far to imagine "Elvis
the Pelvis for president", but suggests that a new light might
be cast on the current presidential campaign were teenagers allowed
to vote, suggesting that the campaign might then become a rock 'n'
roll affair, with a new, original party slogan, such as, "Man,
you ain't never had it so made!" When the Republicans promised
to ride in on their elephant and the Democrats, on their donkey, the
teenagers' dream party could promise to come "scratchin'"
A letter writer indicates that she thought of the burdens which mothers had to bear and that her heart went out to them. She then thought of the children who were breaking their mother's heart by drinking and living in sin, that if they would only stop and think of the few days they had on earth and what they would do when mother was gone, having placed so many hours of sorrow on her during which she stood by them nevertheless. Her mother had gone to Heaven, but she thanked God that she had been good to her and did not give her a heavy burden. She hopes that someone reading her letter would stop and think of the life they were living.
Framed Edition
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