A great stillness surrounded the man, a hushed, waiting stillness. It was as though history itself had stopped to watch this moment. Then the man arose, flexed tired muscles, and looked at the finished work that lay on the table before him. In his heart he knew that it was good work.
Drawing an ink-stained hand across tired eyes, he crossed to the window and stood gazing out upon the quiet world of the night. The stars looked down, silent and clear, as though unmindful of the centuries of the turbulent history of mankind they had watched come and go. And yet the man felt that they must know that here, tonight, was the beginning of a world different from any they had yet looked upon.
Through struggle and strife, the centuries had brought to man a more complete, a fuller knowledge of freedom, of the natural dignity of human rights. Now, tonight, on that paper there on that table, lay the sum of what man learned of freedom, the total of a knowledge gained through thousands of years of tears and laughter, of heartache and the seeking of a God. The man, as he stood here, knew that this was not the end of the struggle, but he knew that here was forged a weapon that would, in the end, bring an ultimate victory.
As he turned back to the room, the lamp made the table an island of light in the surrounding darkness. It was as though he stood from a distance looking upon a stage. He was weary and tired, but surely it was not the weariness alone that brought him the vision. A vision of marching men in tattered blue; Of white topped wagons rolling toward the setting sun. A vision of a man, gaunt, ugly, yet divinely beautiful, saying in a voice as soft and as penetrating as music "A nation undivided!"; Of homes and churches and vineyards and schools and plowed earth, stretching from ocean to ocean; Of people of every race, of every land, of every creed, finding a haven beneath one sky and one law; Of a people who would, in the vary light of those missteps, find the right path and go onward again. This was the vision he saw. As he lifted his head and looked up to the place wherein, in the mind of man, dwells the Lord, tears washed the weariness from his eyes and from his heart. He was humbled that his hand should have been the one to write the end of one history and the beginning of another.
A calendar lay on the table and, as he reached to turn down the lamp, he remembered that the old day had passed and a new one had begun. He took his pen and drew a line through the dead day. He snuffed out the lamp, but the first light of that new day picked out the heading on the paper, "A Declaration of Independence". Then it slanted across the bright, untarnished date, "July Fourth, in the year of our Lord, 1776".
The Writings of Zelda Lorraine Brown Kline
Edited by Owen A. Kline and Michael E. Kline. Assistant Photo Editor David O. Kline
Copyright @1999 The Kline Family Organization, Inc.
First published in the United States of America by The Kline Family Organization, Inc. 4381 West 5375 South Kearns, Utah 84118
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