I was face to face with twoscore Fellow Citizens, in clean blouses and extra frills.

I must tell them what George Washington had done for their country--for _our_ country--for me.
I can laugh now at the impossible metres, the grandiose phrases, the verbose repetitions of my poem.

Years ago I must have laughed at it, when I threw my only copy into the wastebasket.

The copy I am now turning over was loaned me by Miss Dwight, who faithfully preserved it all these years, for the sake, no doubt, of what I strove to express when I laboriously hitched together those dozen and more ungraceful stanzas.

But to the forty Fellow Citizens sitting in rows in front of me it was no laughing matter.