The Cavalcade of America, sponsored by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln in Prologue to Glory. Before we begin our play, here's a bit of friendly advice from DuPont to our listeners in these wartime days. When you redecorate this spring, may we suggest that you use Speed Easy, the new wall paint that covers dingy faded wallpaper in one quick coat. A new discovery of chemistry, DuPont Speed Easy thins with water and dries in an hour. It saves money too. You can do over the average room for less than three dollars. This week America celebrates the 135th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. And in commemoration of this event, DuPont Tonight stars Raymond Massey in a radio adaptation by Robert Tallman of E.P. Conkel's famous play Prologue to Glory, a rich and dramatic chronicle of Lincoln's years as a very young man in Illinois. Here is the young Lincoln that few men know, the lank, rugged young man whose giant frame reminded one Illinois citizen of the ground plan for a long horse. And here is the picture of Abe Lincoln against the homespun background of a frontier town. The story not without humor of a young man of 22 trying to see where he fitted into the scheme of things. DuPont presents Prologue to Glory on the cavalcade of America starring Raymond Massey as Abraham Lincoln. Prologue to Glory, Act I, Scene I, a blackberry thicket near Tom Lincoln's farm, a tree, a rock, a rail fence, the open country behind, the summer sky overall. Simple isn't it? A tree, a rock, a rail fence, and a man reading. No wonder his country delighted to honor him. Since that day when God created man on the earth, none ever displayed the power of industry more signally than did George Washington. Oh, great preceptor. Well, Abe. Oh, hello, Pa. Didn't hear you come up. Didn't mean for you to hear me. Wanted to catch you before you had a chance to hide that book. How long you been at it? Only a spell, Pa. The reading ain't going to clear off my field, Abe. Thought I'd tell you. Thanks, Pa. Couldn't be you come up here to head off that stranger coming up the road, could it? Could it? Down for snickering, Abe. And remember, when that stranger gets here, you lay off them questions you own. Last stranger come through here, I never got a word in it, Abe. Oh, hello there, Critter. Howdy, mister. Well, how do, gents? How's things in these here parts? Things is coming to a setting down spell in Illinois, stranger. Now, right there is where you're wrong, sir. Things ain't come to a setting down spell at all. Why, man, you see them vistas of green yards, that virgin timber, that... Oh, pardon me, gents. My name's Denton Offit. Howdy, Mr. Offit. I'm Tom Lincoln. This is my son, Abe. Howdy, Mr. Offit. Where'd you hail from, Mr. Offit? From Indiana. Yes, sir. All the way from... How did Indiana come in, Mr. Offit? Why, ain't you heard yet? She come in free. She'll already be. But what I want to ask you, Mr. Offit... Did you hear any talk about President Adams and this here Henry Clay? I mean, Abe. I'm sorry, Paul. With my son's permission, Mr. Offit. Was folks talking about pushing on into Illinois here in any numbers? Why, Lord, yes, Mr. Lincoln. Why else am I here? Merchandising is my business, Mr. Lincoln. Dry goods, horse collars and rums, sir. I'm on my way to New Salem to set up a stock before this rash of new settlers breaks out in these parts. And I'll be pleased to serve you old fellows as well, sir. Not me. When a man can hear his neighbor's shotgun, it's time to be moving on. How do you aim to get your stocks of merchandise transported to New Salem, Mr. Offit? Why, up the Sangamon River, naturally. I suppose you know there's a dam there. A rowboat can't get past without jumping over. Well, matter of fact, that's what brings me over this way. I've seen a fellow get a barge stuck there the other day. Water logged and dragged in the bottom, it was. And you know what that fellow done? Can't say he's a dude. Well, sir, this fellow, he was a tall, skinny chap, something like your son here, Mr. Lincoln. This fellow bored a hole into the other end of that barge, let the water run out, plugged her up and she floated over the dam and down the river pretty as you please. And you're looking for that fellow to help you get them supplies up the river to New Salem? That's right. You know where I can find him? No, sir, I don't. I reckon I do. That fellow were me, Mr. Offit. Huh? Is that right, Abe? You was this here fellow? I reckon so, Pa. Well, I'll be... Where'd you learn that one, Abe? Out of book? Oh, not exactly. Well, as I say, I was going to seek this fellow out because he struck me as a smart fellow the way he got that barge over the dam. But a fellow can be smart and lazy at the same time, as the fellow says. Well, Mr. Offit, my pa here teach me to work all right, but he never teach me to enjoy it. But are you good at figures though, son? There's going to be a powerful lot of accounts to keep straight. I can do some's tolerable well, Mr. Offit. Well, that's fine, fine. Of course, I'll have to borrow you a little cash to get the merchandise I'll need. But before that, I reckon we'd better raise a story to put it in. You mean to say you ain't got any merchandise and the store ain't even riz yet, Mr. Offit? Details, mere details. Now, looky here, boy. Tom? Oh, pardon me, ma'am. This is Mr. Offit, ma'am. My step-ma'am, Mr. Offit. I'm right pleased to know you, Mr. Offit. Howdy, ma'am. I just been telling your son about a mercantile venture of mine over in New Salem, Miss Lincoln. I can use a fellow like him if he cares to elevate himself to such a position. Well, I'd better tell you I'm aiming to make a carpenter out of him, Mr. Offit. Ain't no job hiring a good carpenter. Tom, you go back to the cabin and see to my fire. And, sir, I don't like it for you to be putting on taut ideas in Abe's head. He's doing all right here. Go on, Tom. All right, sir. All right. I'm going. Well, reckon I'll water my house. Trough's over behind the barn, Mr. Offit. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you kindly. Well, ma'am. Abe, it's time you was going on for your own good. Go on summers where there's newspapers and books, where you could get some real learning and education. This here Offit only thinks he's big punking, ma'am. Maybe so. But he sees things to do. Maybe his improvidence will show you what not to be, Abe. And I know your own ma would want you to make a man of yourself. Ma did say that once. Well, maybe you better get to work on them stumps. Worries your pa to see you not working. Pa worries a sight over how much other folks don't do. Sometimes I have to sit and worry about same thing. You know what I mean, ma? Your pa's a good man in the sight of the Lord, Abe. But you don't want it said I sat all my life on a stump like him. Is that what you're trying to say to me, ma? I was worrying a little about that, too. Scene 2 in Prologue to Glory. Offit's general store in New Salem. Several months later. A counter and a pair of scales. A stove with stools and boxes around it. A cracker barrel. And a man reading a book. Its name? Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare. Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave of mine. Is it not monstrous that this player here, but in a fiction, in a dream of passion, could force his soul so to his own conceit that from her working all his visage won. Quiet folks, listen. Tears in his eye, distraction in his aspect, a broken voice, and his whole function suiting with forms to his conceit. And all for nothing. For Hecuba. What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? Excellent, Abe. Excellent. Evening, Squire. Good evening, Abe. Evening, Aunt Polly. Ah, Abe. I didn't hear you come in. Oh, evening, Miss Rutley. Evening, Abe. That was almighty powerful reading, Abe. Who writ it? A feller named Shakespeare. I thought you brought considerable feeling to it, Abe. It ain't the feller that says the words, but the one that puts them down, Miss Anne. Abe, you been thinking about that little matter? Now, don't you get talking law again. Why not, Polly? This boy's going to be a lawyer. I made up my mind to it. Squire been thinking about that Ohio case she set me on to. Them two fellers running a fair. That's what I'd like to hear. Well, what'd you figure out? I figured if the steamboat was on the Indiana side and the feller come from Indiana, he wasn't encroaching and the Ohio fellers didn't have a leg to stand on. Exactly. Now, listen, Abe. You just hustle over to Athens and get that set of blackstone off of Dannel Smithers. It ain't but a 32-mile walk. Come along, Squire. We're late. We'll wait for you up to the house, Abe. Abe, watch out for design in females. Squire? Present company. Not excluded. Well, Miss Anne, what can I do for you this fine evening? Something in calico or chewing tobacco? Oh, Abe. Henry Onstad asked me to see if you'd debate at the forum meeting tomorrow night. Debate? The subject is which is more valuable, the bee or the ant? You'll do it, won't you? I ain't got no right telling people which is the most valuable, the bee or the ant. I ain't done enough thinking on that subject. Just what do you figure on doing for a living, Abe? You're reading and studying all the time. What do you expect to be? Haven't thought about it, I guess. You'd make a fine lawyer, Abe. Lawyers. Back in Kentucky, they came with a paper and told my father he didn't own his own land anymore. He'd broken his back digging the rocks out of that soil. It was his farm if ever a farm was a man's own. But the lawyer said different. But there's two sides to the law, Abe. If you knew the other side... The mother grieved herself sick. She didn't have the strength to start again in the wilderness. It killed her. You carried the memory of that too long, Abe. You've got to free yourself of it. You think I'll talk it out of me if I join that debating society of yours? Yes, I do. But bees and ants, she's rusellum. They need somebody in there to get them talking sense. There's other things besides bees and ants. That's what it means. There's the land growing around us. People's minds opening up. Not knowing what to think, what laws to make. There's a new country and a new race of people to live in it, to build it up and make it strong. That's good, Abe. You tell them that. Wake them up, Abe. That's what they need. Then there's plenty of room for local improvements too. Now take that Sangerman River now. We could dredge it. That'll let the steamboats in from St. Louis. In no time at all, there'd be more roaring, bustling commas than a man could shake his stick at. Tell it to them, Abe. Tell them about America and that new race of people living in it. Tell them, Abe. Tell them. That gonna miss Anne. I believe I will. And so I say, ladies and gentlemen, the lessons which the bee teaches us are inestimable. The winter is on him, but his honey is in the comb. Therefore, I say let us study the bee. Let us go to him and learn. And having learned, let us go and do likewise. And now the negative upheld by Mr. Abe Lincoln. Ladies and gentlemen, I probably won't show up very bright against an eloquent, polished speaker like the Honorable Positive. I should like to add my praise, sir, to the admirable way you handle those bees without getting stung. But I'd like to point out that no matter how much we pretend it so, ants are not again bees or vice versa. If Mr. Anstott's bees were to get into your bonnets or my ants were to get into your britches, that would be a subject for discussion and immediate action. Folks, I had a long talk today with some ants along the Sangamon River. I suppose you know, it flows right outside the door here. You know what they told me? Well, they said if they was the people of New Salem, they'd do something about those bends in the river that keep the steamboats from coming up here from St. Louis. We've got the land, the pastures, the crops. All we need is a market to sell in and a way to fetch us back sugar and iron and furniture. Objection! Mr. Chairman, the Honorable Negative is departing from the subject of this debate. The speaker will confine himself to the subject at hand. I'm all finished with that, Mr. Chairman. But seeing as how something's got to be done and has got to be done quick, I want to take this opportunity hereby and forthwith to announce myself as candidate for Sangamon County to the legislature of the state of Illinois. You are listening to the Cavalcade of America, sponsored by DuPont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presenting Raymond Bassey as Abraham Lincoln in Prologue to Glory, the unusual and tender story of Lincoln's early years. As our DuPont-Cavalcade play continues, young Abe Lincoln is in New Salem, Illinois, where he has just announced himself as a candidate for the Illinois state legislature. About to begin his speaking tour, he stops at the home of Anne Rutledge to say goodbye. Morning, Granny Rutledge. Anne home yet? Abe Lincoln, let me look at you. All trigged out like a brand new breast pain. Time I slicked up some, ain't it, Granny? Reckon you're going out lecturing and come to say goodbye to Anne. Well, the plague lecturing can just wait till you read old Granny Rutledge a mite out in the Bible. What'll it be today, Granny? How about the book of Job? No one reads the book of Job so plain and tolerable as you, Abe. Thank you, Granny. There was a man in the land of Oz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright and one that feared God and turned away from evil. Yes, yes. Go on, Abe. His substance was seven thousand sheep and five hundred yoke of oxen and a frog. And the frog, desirous of equaling the ox, swelled herself up. She swole and swole and her son cried out, though you burst, Mother, you will never exceed the ox. But when she had swolled a third time, she burst. Be that passage in the book of Job, Abe? Yes, Granny, every word of it. Abe Bray Lincoln, you get out of here. Now get. That ain't in the book of Job and you know it. Now you get. Stay easy with that cane there, Granny. Well, I ought to lick you with it. Sakes alive. Sorry I'm late, Abe. Oh, my goodness, you look like a senator already. I guess you won't be needing me anymore now that Ann's here. Miss Ann. So you're off to the wars, Abe? Yeah, I'm talking over toward Antioch tonight and over east. How does it feel to be about elected to something, Abe? The Honorable Mr. Lincoln. Oh, Miss Ann, sit down and be still. I probably won't really get it. Nonsense. With that brand new white Cambridge shirt on, you can't help but win. I guess maybe I got to win now. Story's gone, off it's gone. Death's it's all I got. Don't add up very attractive the way you tell it, Abe. No, I reckon I'd make a good walk and delegate for a long spell of bad weather. I thought of going into blacksmithing if I don't get elected. I never knew a blacksmith had died of starvation. Did you, Miss Ann? No. I thought of surveying, too. And then there's the law. Maybe I could pick up a little extra money at harvest time so you could have a falderall now and then. A falderall, Abe? For me? Yeah, like for your hair or a polka sweet. I never use falderalls, Abe. You could have some when we're married. Married? You know, Abe, I used to think I shouldn't marry you. Did you? No, I was going to ask you. I knew it, Abe. I'm asking you now, Miss Ann. Will you? Yes. I think I will, Senator. Senator? Senator, did you say? From now on, I'm going to sit on the seat of the Almighty and consort with the Lord. But first, I've got to make me a speech over an Antioch. That'll hold me for tonight. Goodbye, Abe dear. I hope you win. Goodbye, Ann. The Final Act The final act. The scene, the porch of Squire Green's cabin, a tree, a rise of ground in rear going off to the horizon. The time, well, as some reckoned it, a few months later. But for one, there was a weary lifetime lived through. An eternity of mourning and heartbreak. Abe, can't I come to the stage to suffer? No, thanks, Aunt Polly. You going down to Springfield to take them law examinations? No, I don't think so, Squire. You'd make a fine lawyer, Abe. Somebody else told me that once. Look how well you did in the election. I lost that election, Aunt Polly. I lost something else, too. Abe Lincoln, I've been meaning to say this to you for a long time, and now you just stand right there and listen. Ann Rutledge is dead. She's gone. All right, the Lord give us and the Lord take us away. Amen. But grieving and moping won't bring her back. Swallowing in misery and walking around with your hurt eyes staring won't bring her back, neither. There's nothing I want to do now. She showed me my power and my strength, Ann did, and now she's gone. All I can think is it ain't right. She ought to be living now. It can't be right for a good God to do a thing like this, to take one so promising. You've got to go on, Abe. You owe it to yourself. Seems like I went through something like this once before, a long time ago when Ma died, my own Ma. Funny that Ann should die of the milksick, same as her. I remember it so well. I was seven. Ma knew she was dying, and on the sixth day she called me to her bed. She talked of many strange things, things present and things to come. She told me to serve God and that the way to serve God was to serve his people. She was among the lowliest of mankind. She walked the earth with her poor feet in the dust, her head in the stars. Pa took me down into the woods to make her coffee. Pa was sawing and I was hammering the pegs in. The hammer dropped at my feet. It was like someone was driving them into my heart. It's just going through all that again now. I have respect for your feelings, Abe, but like Polly said, you can't go grieving your life away. Gosh almighty boy, go down to Springfield, pass them examinations. Go out and stand for the legislature again. What if he gets another licking? Then bounce right back. And if he gets licked again, run a third time. Get out and talk to the people. Wake them up. Talk to the people. Wake them up. Anne told me that once. Of course she did. Another thing, in all your grieving and misery, Abe, you've gone and forgotten just who you're grieving for. Anne wouldn't have been very proud of you moping around, questioning the West's wisdom of the Lord. She'd be the first one to want you to take up something. Yes. I reckon she'd not be very proud. Of course she wouldn't. Anne had her own ideas on the way I ought to live, the things I ought to do. They were good ideas, Abe. Good for me, I guess. Maybe I ought to try and live the way she'd want me to. You're beginning to see her again, Abe, as she really was. You know, Aunt Polly, Squire, it was only a year ago that Denton Offit rid up on that sorrel horse and asked me to come to New Salem and keep store for her. A man can live almost a whole lifetime in a year, sometimes. Are you going to Springfield, Abe? Yeah. I'm going to Springfield. I hear tell how there's a new country growing up around us, and how a lot of folks got ideas how it ought to be run. Well, I got a few of my own. Maybe they ain't worth much, but I reckon maybe I ought to be telling them. The scenes are done, the prologue is ended, and now on to Springfield and eventual glory. Thank you, Raymond Massey, for your participation in tonight's program, presented by Cabell Cade in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's birth. And now Clayton Collier, speaking for DuPont, tells us of an unusual task cellophane is performing in the building of our airplanes. You might not think that the manufacture of airplanes has much in common with a package of frozen peas or beans you enjoy for dinner, but it has. Just as the grocer takes the frozen vegetables from his low-temperature case, so ice-cold rivets in cellophane are now served to aircraft workers from portable freezer cabinets. This novel wartime application of DuPont cellophane is saving bomber manufacturers precious time and money that once went to waste in resorting, reheating, and re-cooling aluminum alloy rivets. Unlike steel rivets, which must be hammered while they're hot, aluminum alloy rivets have to be driven while they are cold. Several types, after being heat-treated, are stored at sub-freezing temperatures in Freon refrigerated cabinets, the same safe Freon refrigerant that preserves your food. This storage keeps them from hardening before they are used. Here's where DuPont cellophane comes in. The rivets are chilled and delivered to the workers on the aircraft production lines in cellophane bags. The story of how cellophane was chosen for the job is what links the aircraft industry with the quick frozen foods on your dinner table. A few years ago, frozen foods were a novelty. Gradually, the stores began to offer more and more of them, from garden vegetables to fish. Today, you can even buy quick frozen chicken ready for the oven. So when aircraft manufacturers began to look around for the best way of chilling and delivering rivets to the production lines, they didn't have to look far. DuPont cellophane's outstanding service in packaging frozen foods qualified it immediately. It was ideal. One aircraft plant reports that where it used to have to re-sort 15,000 pounds of rivets a month, cellophane has cut the figure to 600 pounds. To its wartime job of delivering foods on the battlefront and conserving frozen foods on the home front, DuPont cellophane has added another wartime job, delivering frozen rivets on the production front. Cellophane is one of DuPont's better things for better living through chemistry. Next week, the DuPont Cavalcade reports in dramatic fashion a woman's view of our men at the front as seen through the eyes of Frances Lankford. It's a tender and thrilling story about the hearts of men and what those men are thinking about their wives and their sweethearts and their families back home. And Frances Lankford will present a song that she thinks may be the song of the war, a ballad written by a youngster in England with words he could sing but couldn't put into a letter. Cavalcade is pleased to remind its audience that Raymond Massey is currently co-starred with Catherine Cornell in the Broadway hit, Lovers and Friends. The DuPont Cavalcade Orchestra was under the direction of Donald Burys. This is Roland Winters sending best wishes from Cavalcade sponsor, the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware, who invites you to join Cavalcade's audience again next Monday evening when Frances Lankford will be starred in G.I. Valentine with Tony Romano. This is the National Broadcasting Company. This is the National Broadcasting Company.
