I am near the end of a decades-long task: transcribing old written notes into d igital form.

I came across a log entry dated April 12, 1974 and cannot resist shar ing it in this forum. It is headed Reading Plain Speaking by Merle Miller (Harry Trumans oral biography). Note that all the books listed are in the public domain. --Page 111Trumans most-read books Plutarchs Lives Caesars Commentaries Benjamin Franklins Autobiography Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Bunker Bean by Harry Leon Wilson Missouri s Struggle for Statehood, 1804-1821, by Floyd Calvin Shoemaker Bible (King James) Platos Republic William Shakespeare, all writings especially: Hamlet King Lear Othello The Sonnets Complete works of Robert Burns Complete works of Lord Byron (George Gordon), especially Childe Harold Edward Shepherd Creasys Fifteen Decisive Battles Of The World: From Marat hon To Waterloo Charles Beards An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution --On page 239, Dean Acheson (Secretary of State under Truman) is quoted in a speec h he made to the Associated Harvard Clubs of Boston on June 4, 1946 when he was Under-secretary of State: For a long time we have gone along with some well-tested principles of conduct: that it was better to tell the truth than falsehoods; that a half-truth was no t ruth at all; that duties were older than and as fundamental as rights; that, as Justice Holmes put it, the mode by which the inevitable came to pass was effort; that to perpetuate a harm was always wrong, no matter how many joined in it, bu t to perpetuate it on a weaker person was particularly detestable Our institution s are founded on the assumption that most people will follow these principles mo st of the time because they want to, and the institutions work pretty well when this assumption is true. It seems to me the path of hope is toward the concrete, the manageable But it is a long and tough job, and one for which we as a people are not particularly suit ed. We believe that any problem can be solved with a little ingenuity and withou t inconvenience to the folks at large And our name for problems is significant. We call them headaches. You take a pow der and they are gone. These pains about which we have been talking are not like that. They are like the pain of earning a living. They will stay with us until death. We have got to understand that all our lives the danger, the uncertainty, the need for alertness, for effort, for discipline will be upon us. It will be hard for us. But we are in for it, and the only question is whether we shall kno w it soon enough. --Quoting Dean Acheson again on Page 268: The manner in which one endured what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured, I am inclined to agree with Sir Francis Bacon that: t he good things that belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things w hich belong to adversity are to be admired.