Therefore I had taken a shorthand writer there before, to see if I could not get him to write at least a few lines about Appomattox.[5] But he was at that time not well enough to undertake it.

I was aware that of all the hundred versions of Appomattox, not one was really correct.

Therefore I was extremely anxious that he should leave behind him the truth.

His throat was not distressing him, and his voice was much better and stronger than usual.

He was so delighted to have gotten Appomattox accomplished once more in his life--to have gotten the matter off his mind--that he was as talkative as his old self.