Clearly, it was just a slip...

I was reading the speech by Martin Luther King on August 28, '63 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. One thing caught my eye.

But let me say first that one of the reasons that Martin Luther King was such a good orator that he had a lot of phrases stored up in memory that whenever pressed he could always fall back on. For example, when he says, "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight...", he's not making that up on the spot, he's quoting from the Bible, and not only is he doing that because it's nice to quote from, but he doesn't have to think about what he's saying. He can get the next idea in line, or be mindful of the delivery and where he's going. Twenty years of sermons allowed him to build up an impressive reserve of phrases like this.

So, when he's sermonizing, he's got his plan, he has his text, he has phrases like this to help him get there, and he can also free associate a little to move the argument along; and do all the things like develop a cadence, build to a climax, and everything else.

And then there is this:

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California...

Wait. What was that last one?