"Here I am, my little pink of a Lucy," and he straightened himself up by the side of the apple tree around which the pansies were growing. "That is a lovely place for them. They don't have too much sunshine. How large the blossoms are! May I have that big purple one? It looks at me like a loving face." "Of course you may, Lucy. But where is Joe?" "He has gone on an errand for mother. After that, he's coming here. But we can't stay very long this evening. Mother said we must go to bed early to-night so as to be fresh for the picnic to-morrow. You are going, aren't you, Uncle Sam?" "Certainly I am. I wouldn't miss it for the world." "I'm so glad. Mother said I must be sure to tell you not to take any lunch. We shall carry enough for you. It is a lovely lunch. Roast chicken and nut cake and apple jelly. I can hardly wait for to-morrow. Now aren't you glad you are going?" "It makes me hungry to think of it, so you and I will have to eat some cherries I picked this afternoon." "Aren't they beauties! How juicy they are. Red cherries are prettier, but I think I like these blackhearts the best. Here comes Joe now." "You are just in time," called Uncle Sam, as Joe came hurrying along. "Cherries are ripe, cherries are ripe," sang Lucy, as her brother sat down on the steps, quite out of breath. "Christopher!" exclaimed Joe as soon as he could speak. "I've had an awful long walk and I'm as tired as anything." "You shouldn't say 'Christopher,' nor 'awful,' either, Joe. They are as bad as slang." "You needn't preach, Lucy. I should like to know a better word than 'Christopher' in the whole language. Wasn't Columbus's name Christopher?" "I know that. It is all the more reason for not making the word so common. He was too great a man. But, Uncle Sam, that makes me think of what Joe was saying the other night. He and I both think Columbia is a better name for our country than America." "Let us see about that, children. I must tell you how it all happened. "You remember, of course, that Columbus never knew what he had discovered. He thought he had visited the shores of Asia. Some years after his first great voyage another man from his own country of Italy sailed out into the west. His name was Americus Vespucius. A little hard to say, isn't it? "He was a merchant who had made several long voyages already. He went farther south than Columbus and sailed along the shores of South America. "'It is a vast country,' he said to himself, and he was the first one to call it the 'New World.' He wrote long letters telling of what he had seen. The man who printed these letters called the New World America in his honor. And it has been called America ever since. But I like Columbia best myself, children. The name is very dear to me." While Joe and Lucy finished eating the cherries, Uncle Sam sat thinking.