You had been a paper boy to me all these years - two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.
As the chief speaker at the dedication of the national cemetery at the Gettysburg Battlefield, statesman Edward Everett wrote to Lincoln: I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.