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Now, the VOA Special English program, "Words
and Their Stories".
Stories about ghosts and other spirits have scared people through the
ages. Some ghosts, however, are not to be feared. They are ghostwriters
just as a ghost is a spirit that you cannot see. A ghostwriter is a writer
whose name is unseen. A ghostwriter is a person who is paid to write a
speech, report or book for another person. Usually, that other person is
famous but not as a writer. The ghostwriter does the writing and gets paid
for it. But his name is not on the book as the writer. Sometimes famous
people want to tell the story of their lives. Now a person may have been a
great success as a movie star, for example, but he may not be much of a
writer. So a ghostwriter is needed. The writer uses the ideas, memories
and life history of the movie star to produce a book that seems written by
the actor.
Ghost writing happens a lot in politics. Most political leaders
including legislators are much too busy to write their own speeches. So
politicians have speechwriters whose words become known, but whose names
and faces are unknown.
There is an old expression that "there is nothing new under the sun."
Like most popular sayings, it has some truth to it, especially about ideas
for political speeches. Politicians often borrow expressions or ideas from
others. Sometimes, they give credit to the person who first uses the
idea.
But sometimes they do not. For example, in 1933, president
Franklin Roosevelt told the country: the only thing we have to fear is
fear itself. The words were very similar to some by an American writer
Henry David Thoreau more than 100 years ago. Thoreau wrote nothing is so
much to be feared as fear and that sounds like a 400 year old statement by
French writer Michel de Montaigne: the thing of which I have most fear is
fear.
Abraham Lincoln before he was president also borrowed one of his
best-known sayings. He used the saying in a speech about slavery, which
was dividing the country north against the south. Lincoln said a nation
divided against itself half slave and half free could not exist. As
Lincoln put it, a house divided against itself can not stand. Lincoln must
to read the book of mark in the Christian Bible. In it, Jesus Christ tells
his followers if a house be divided against itself that house can not
stand.
This VOA Special English program Words and Their Stories was written by
Marilyn Rice Christiano . Maurice Joyce was the narrator. | 
