You have got to keep your eyes up above the ground, or your feet will
never take you up any mountain side.
And how them mariners tried to make Columbus turn back after he had at
last, through all his tribulations, sot sail on the broad, treacherous
Ocean--jest think of his tribulations before he started!
Troubles with poverty, and ignorance, and unbelief, and perils by foes,
and perils by false friends, and perils by long delay.
How for years and years he carried round them strong beliefs of hisen,
ofttimes in a hungry and faint body, and couldn't git nobody to believe
in 'em--couldn't git nobody to even hear about 'em.
Year after year did he toil and endeavor to git somebody to listen to
his plans, and glowin' hopes.
Year after year, while the lines deepened on his patient face, and the
hopes that wuz glowin' and eager became deep and fervent, and a part of
him.
How strange, how strange and sort o' pitiful, this one man out of a
world full of men and wimmen, this one man with his tired feet on the
dust and worn sand of the Old World, and his head and heart in the New
World.
No one else of the world full of men and wimmen to believe as he did--no
one else to be even willin' to hear him talk about his dreams, his
hopes, and impassioned beliefs.
No; and I don't know but Columbus would have dropped right down in his
tracts, and we wouldn't have been discovered to this day, if a woman
hadn't stepped in, and gin the seal of her earnest trust to the ideal of
the ambitious man.
He a-willin' to plough the new path into the ontried fields, she a-bein'
willin' to hold the plough, as you may say, or, at all events, to help
him in every way in her power--with all her womanly faith, and all her
ear-rings, and breast-pins, etc., etc.
[Illustration: With all her womanly faith, and all her ear-rings and
breast-pins, etc., etc.]
She, a female woman, out of all that world full of folks, she it wuz
alone that stood out boldly the friend of Columbus and Discovery.
"Male and female created He them." Another deep instance of that great
truth in life and in nature, and in all matters relatin' to the good of
the world. "Male and female created He them."
The world will find it out after awhile, and so will Dr. Buckley.
Ferdinand wuz a good creeter--or that is, middlin' good; but his
eye-sight wuzn't such as would see down clear through the truth of
Columbuses theory.
And if folks set out to blame Ferdinand too much, let 'em pause and
think what the World would say and do if a man should appear in our
streets to-day, and say that he believed that he had proof that there
wuz a vast, beautiful country a-layin' in the skies to the west of us
beyend the clouds of the sunset, and he wanted to git money to build a
air-ship to sail out to it.
How much money would he git? How much stock would he sell in that
enterprise? How many men would he git to sail out with him on that
voyage of Discovery? What would Vanderbilt and Russell Sage say to it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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