that
has made America today the home of millions of white men and millions of
free men. But Columbus showed the way.

CHAPTER XIV. HOW THE STORY TURNS OUT.

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, a