eheads 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 unt