s the
Andes with railways. William Wheelwright's memory lives in grateful
statues now.

Columbus was not only laughed at by the Council of Salamanca, but was
jeered at by the children in the streets, as he journeyed from town to
town holding his orphan boy by the hand. He wandered in the visions of
God and the stars, and he came to say, after the shouts of homage that
greeted him as the viceroy of isles, "God made me the messenger of the
new heavens and new earth, and told me where to find them!"

Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, presents a picture of the
unfortunate condition of many lives of whom the world expected nothing,
and for whom it had only the smile of incredulity when in them the
Godlike purpose appeared. He says:

"Hannibal had but one eye; Appius Claudius and Timoleon were blind, as
were John, King of Bohemia, and Tiresais the prophet. Homer was blind;
yet who, saith Tully, made more accurate, lively, or better descriptions
with both his eyes! Democritus was blind, yet, as Laertius writes of
him, he saw more than all Greece besides. . . . AEsop was crooked,
Socrates purblind, Democritus withered, Seneca lean and harsh, ugly to
behold; yet show me so many flourishing wits, such divine spirits.
Horace, a little, blear-eyed, contemptible fellow, yet who so
sententious and wise? Marcilius Ficinus, Faber Stapulensis, a couple of
dwarfs; Melanchthon, a short, hard-favored man, yet of incomparable
parts of all three; Galba the emperor was crook-backed; Epictetus, lame;
the great Alexander a little man of stature; Augustus Caesar, of the same
pitch; Agesilaus, _despicabili forma_, one of the most deformed princes
that Egypt ever had, was yet, in wisdom and knowledge, far beyond his
predecessors."

Why do I call your attention to these struggles in this place in
association of an incident of a failure in life that was ridiculed?

It has been my lot, in a somewhat active life in the city of Boston for
twenty-five years, to meet every day an inspiring name that all the
world knows, and that stands for what right resolution, the overcoming
of besetting sins in youth, and persevering energy may accomplish
against the ridicule of the world. There have been many books written
having that name as a title--FRANKLIN.

I have almost daily passed the solemn, pyramidal monument in the old
Granary Burying Ground, between the Tremont Building and Park Street
Church, that bears the names of the Franklin family, in whi