Though the friends grouped around the tavern fire are united in two sympathetic qualities--devotion to the Muses and a proud conviction, singularly justified by events, of the destiny of their country--it is manifest that the membership of the little club furnishes only another illustration of the truism that human personality is the most varying thing in the world and that life has different lessons for each of us. The most baffling individuality of them all, the man whose story seems to have been a quest for some mysterious, unattained goal, was Joel Barlow. In early life everything he attempted went to pieces. His chaplaincy in the army was a _tour de force_ which he dropped as soon as possible. The law proved a mistake almost as soon as begun and his editorship of "The American Mercury" was abandoned after less than a year. Perhaps it was with renewed hope, perhaps it was with something of desperation, that he persuaded himself to embark on an entirely new undertaking and to accept a proposal to journey overseas to procure settlers for the Ohio lands which the Scioto Land Company desired to sell to unsuspecting Frenchmen. It is an established fact that Barlow was unsuspecting himself, but after he had procured the settlers and shipped them off with golden promises the project turned out to be a gigantic fraud. Personal humiliation was added to general discouragement. Yet somehow he survived the mortification. It may be that at this particular time mundane affairs did not seem to be of the utmost importance. He was dwelling somewhat in the clouds, in a vision--the "Vision of Columbus," which he proposed to amplify and republish in a form more fitting the great theme than the first modest edition of the original poem. He was pre-occupied with the millenium he foresaw. To the present day reader it is of the highest interest to note that the "Vision" foretold the Panama Canal, and that the climax of the poem is a congress of the nations. "Hither the delegated sires ascend, And all the cares of every clime attend. . . . . . . To give each realm its limits and its laws Bid the last breath of dire contention cease, And bind all regions in the leagues of peace."