Whenever you start to read a story that you hope will be interesting,
you always wonder, do you not, how it is going to turn out? Your
favorite fairy tale or wonder story that began with "once upon a time,"
ends, does it not, "so the prince married the beautiful princess, and
they lived happy ever after?"
Now, how does this story that we have been reading together turn out?
You don't think it ended happily, do you? It was, in some respects, more
marvelous than any fairy tale or wonder story; but, dear me! you say,
why couldn't Columbus have lived happily, after he had gone through so
much, and done so much, and discovered America, and given us who came
after him so splendid a land to live in?
Now, just here comes the real point of the story. Wise men tell us that
millions upon millions of busy little insects die to make the beautiful
coral islands of the Southern seas. Millions and millions of men and
women have lived and labored, died and been forgotten by the world they
helped to make the bright, and beautiful, and prosperous place to live
in that it is to-day.
Columbus was one of these millions; but he was a leader among them and
has not been forgotten. As the world has got farther away from the time
in which he lived, the man Columbus, who did so much and yet died almost
unnoticed, has grown more and more famous; his name is immortal, and
to-day he is the hero Columbus--one of the world's greatest men.
We, in America, are fond of celebrating anniversaries. I suppose the
years that you boys and girls have thus far lived have been the most
remarkable in the history of the world for celebrating anniversaries.
For fully twenty years the United States has been keeping its birthday.
The celebration commenced long before you were born, with the one
hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Lexington (in 1875). It has
not ended yet. But in 1892, We celebrated the greatest of all our
birthdays--the discovery of the continent that made it possible for us
to be here at all.
Now this has not always been so with us. I suppose that in 1592 and
in 1692 no notice whatever was taken of the twelfth day of October, on
which--one hundred and two hundred years before--Columbus had landed
on that flat little "key" known as Watling's Island down among the West
Indies, and had begun a new chapter in the world's wonderful story. In
1592, there was hardly anybody here to celebrate the anniversary--in
fact, there was hardly anybody here at all, except a few Spanish
settlers in the West Indies, in Mexico, and in Florida. In 1692, there
were a few scattered settlements of Frenchmen in Canada, of Englishmen
in New England, Dutchmen in New York, Swedes in Delaware, and Englishmen
in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. But none of these people
loved the Spaniards. They hated them, indeed; for there had been fierce
fighting going on for nearly a hundred years between Spain and England,
and you couldn't find an Englishman, a Dutchman or a Swede who was
willing to say a good word for Spain, or thank God for the man who
sailed away in Spanish ships to discover America two hundred years
before.
In 1792, people did think a little more about this, and there were a few
who did remember that, three hundred years before, Columbus had found
the great continent upon which, in that year 1792, a new republic,
called the United States of America, had only just been started after a
long and bloody war of rebellion and revolution.
We do not find, however, that in that year of 1792 there were many, if
any, public celebrations of the Discovery of America, in America itself.
A certain American clergyman, however, whose name was the Rev. Elhanan
Winchester, celebrated the three hundredth anniversary of the Discovery
of America by Columbus. And he celebrated it not in America, but in
England, where he was then living. On the twelfth of October, 1792,
Winchester delivered an address on "Columbus and his Discoveries,"
before a great assembly of interested listeners. In that address he said
some very enthusiastic and some very remarkable things about the America
that was to be:
"I see the United States rise in all their ripened glory before me,"
he said. "I look through and beyond every yet peopled region of the
New World, and behold period still brightening upon period. Where one
contiguous depth of gloomy wilderness now shuts out even the beams of
day, I see new States and empires, new seats of wisdom and knowledge,
new religious domes spreading around. In places now untrod by any but
savage beasts, or men as savage as they, I hear the voices of happy
labor, and see beautiful cities rising to view. I behold the whole
continent highly cultivated and fertilized, full of cities, towns and
villages, beautiful and lovely beyond expression. I hear the praises
of my great Creator sung upon the banks of those rivers now unknown to
song. Behold the delightful prospect! See the silver and gold of America
employed in the service of the Lord of the whole earth! See slavery,
with all its train of attendant evils, forever abolished! See a
communication opened through the whole continent, from North to South
and from East to West, through a most fruitful country. Behold the glory
of God extending, and the gospel spreading through the whole land!"
Of course, it was easy for a man to see and to hope and to say all this;
but it is a little curious, is it not, that he should have seen things
just as they have turned out?
In Mr. Winchester's day, the United States of America had not quite four
millions of inhabitants. In his day Virginia was the largest State--in
the matter of population--Pennsylvania was the second and New York
the third. Philadelphia was the greatest city, then followed New York,
Boston, Baltimore and Charleston. Chicago was not even thought of.
To-day, four hundred years after Columbus first saw American shores, one
hundred and sixteen years after the United States were started in life
by the Declaration of American Independence, these same struggling
States of one hundred years ago are joined together to make the greatest
and most prosperous nation in the world. With a population of more than
sixty-two millions of people; with the thirteen original States grown
into forty-four, with the population of its three largest cities--New
York; Philadelphia and Chicago--more than equal to the population of the
whole country one hundred years ago; with schools and colleges and happy
homes brightening the whole broad land that now stretches from ocean to
ocean, the United States leads all other countries in the vast continent
Columbus discovered. Still westward, as Columbus led, the nation
advances; and, in a great city that Columbus could never have imagined,
and that the prophet of one hundred years ago scarcely dreamed of, the
mighty Republic in 1892 invited all the rest of the world to join with
it in celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the Discovery of
America by Columbus the Admiral. And to do this celebrating fittingly
and grandly, it built up the splendid White City by the great Fresh
Water Sea.
Columbus was a dreamer; he saw such wonderful visions of what was to
be, that people, as we know, tapped their foreheads and called him "the
crazy Genoese." But not even the wildest fancies nor the most wonderful
dreams of Columbus came anywhere near to what he would really have seen
if--he could have visited the Exposition at Chicago, in the great White
City by the lake--a "show city" specially built for the World's Fair of
1893, given in his honor and as a monument to his memory.
Why, he would say, the Cathay that I spent my life trying to find was
but a hovel alongside this! What would he have seen? A city stretching a
mile and a half in length, and more than half a mile in breadth; a space
covering over five hundred acres of ground, and containing seventeen
magnificent buildings, into any one of which could have been put the
palaces of all the kings and queens of Europe known to Columbus's day.
And in these buildings he would have seen gathered together, all the
marvelous and all the useful things, all the beautiful and all the
delightful things that the world can make to-day, arranged and displayed
for all the world to see. He would have stood amazed in that wonderful
city of glass and iron, that surpassingly beautiful city, all of purest
white, that had been built some eight miles from the center of big and
busy Chicago, looking out upon the blue waters of mighty Lake Michigan.
It was a city that I wish all the boys and girls of America--especially
all who read this story of the man in whose honor it was built, might
have visited. For as they saw all its wonderful sights, studied its
marvelous exhibits, and enjoyed its beautiful belongings, they would
have been ready to say how proud, and glad, and happy they were to
think that they were American girls and boys, living in this wonderful
nineteenth century that has been more crowded with marvels, and
mysteries, and triumphs than any one of the Arabian Nights ever
contained.
But, whether you saw the Columbian Exhibition or not, you can say that.
And then stop and think what a parrot did. That is one of the most
singular things in all this wonder story you are reading. Do you not
remember how, when Columbus was slowly feeling his way westward, Captain
Alonso Pinzon saw some parrots flying southward, and believing from this
that the land they sought was off in that direction, he induced Columbus
to change his course from the west to the south? If Columbus had not
changed his course and followed the parrots, the Santa Maria, with the
Pinta and the Nina, would have sailed on until they had entered the
harbor of Savannah or Charleston, or perhaps the broad waters of
Chesapeake Bay. Then the United States of to-day would have been
discovered and settled by Spaniards, and the whole history of the land
would have been quite different from what it has been. Spanish blood
has peopled, but not uplifted, the countries of South America and the
Spanish Main. English blood, which, following after--because Columbus
had first shown the way--peopled, saved and upbuilt the whole
magnificent northern land that Spain missed and lost. They have found
in it more gold than ever Columbus dreamed of in his never-found Cathay;
they have filled it with a nobler, braver, mightier, and more numerous
people than ever Columbus imagined the whole mysterious land of the
Indies contained; they have made it the home of freedom, of peace,
of education, of intelligence and of progress, and have protected and
bettered it until the whole world respects it for its strength, honors
it for its patriotism, admires it for its energy, and marvels at it for
its prosperity.
And this is what a flying parrot did: It turned the tide of lawless
adventure, of gold-hunting, of slave-driving, and of selfish strife for
gain to the south; it left the north yet unvisited until it was ready
for the strong, and sturdy, and determined men and women who, hunting
for liberty, came across the seas and founded the colonies that became
in time the free and independent republic of the United States of
America.
And thus has the story of Columbus really turned out. Happier than any
fairy tale, more marvelous than any wonder book, the story of the United
States of America is one that begins, "Once upon a time," and has come
to the point where it depends upon the boys and girls who read it, to
say whether or not they shall "live happily ever after."
The four hundred years of the New World's life closed its chapter of
happiness in the electric lights and brilliant sunshine of the marvelous
White City by Lake Michigan. It is a continued story of daring, devotion
and progress, that the boys and girls of America should never tire
of reading. And this story was made possible and turned out so well,
because of the briefer, but no less interesting story of the daring, the
devotion and the faith of the determined Genoese sailor of four hundred
years ago, whom men knew as Don Christopher Columbus, the Admiral of the
Ocean Seas.