The memorial took on a new meaning. It will have tremendous history lessons for generations to come.

It is by no means improbable that some future textbook, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious commonplace to their descendants

It adds some history to a campus and kind of ties together some of the various generations that have gone there.

For generations, many people have known that Jefferson fathered children by Sally Hemings, ... The much publicized results of DNA tests several years ago simply corroborate what had been common knowledge. Over the years, certain highly regarded scholars defended Jefferson's 'purity,' categorically denying claims that there had been a sexual relationship between master and slave. Since those 'revelations,' some of them have retreated from their former position of 'It didn't happen' only to insist that the affair between Hemings and Jefferson was an exception. But in fact such affairs, far from being exceptional, were fairly commonplace. That's part of what I wanted to convey by 'the American way' of the title.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it.

What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it! Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A