Dear Wigleaf:

Can you imagine how scary it must have been for America after William Henry Harrison caught cold and died? He was the first president to die in office. Which was totally his own dumb fault, since he insisted on giving the longest inauguration speech in history, on a cold and rainy day no less and he was not exactly a spring chicken if you know what I mean. But America didn't have a plan, Wigleaf! No plan at all! We were still a fumbling-around nation back then. I mean, the Constitution didn't even say if John Tyler could be president or just acting president, though eventually we figured it all out and then after he was done being president he was elected to the Confederate Congress and so America didn't even officially mourn him when he died. I guess we thought he was kind of a dick.

I wonder how many people have done really important things and then when they died the only thing people could think was, wow, what a dick that guy was.

Probably a lot of us. Probably all of us.

Yrs,

Amber Sparks






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Read AS's story, "Vesuvius."

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