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Hidden Springs, Delicate Wheels: Hildene, Robert Lincoln's Home: Hearthside
Old---you feel youthful fury as you put
your father's private papers to the flames,
tossing each one in, quickly as you can.
The work is tedious, across a span
of hours. And, worse, you know it is futile.
Your mother, in profound insanity,
strove wildly to revise the proven past.
But Herndon made thorough discovery,
proceeding with exact due diligence
to document the offered evidence
found in each elder's spoken memory.
These facts are more than legend, and will last
longer than envy's repetitious claims.
What caused your dying father's broad, last smile?
Did he behold, beyond this lost world, Ann
Rutledge, there waiting, lovely and barefoot.
