Part 2 (1/2)

”Now this is a sorrowful jest and a very unfair jest that is happening,”

said he. ”For I who have dreamed a beautiful dream of the land of my imagining will quite probably henceforth be known only as the discoverer of what will turn out to be merely one more hideous and stupid country.”

And tears came to the eyes of Colombo, for on the waves behind him floated the torn and scattered pages of the poem which sang the imagined vision of Beauty of him whom men long and long ago called the Dreamer.

Thus it was in the old days.

a.n.a.lYSIS AND SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING ARTICLE In the Manner of Dr. Frank Crane

There is a lesson for us all in this beautiful story of how Columbus realized his ambition to be a great discoverer.

Men called Columbus a Dreamer--but that is just what folks once said about Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford.

The world has a place for Dreamers--if they are Practical Dreamers.

Columbus was ambitious. Ambition is a great thing if it is unselfish ambition. By unselfish I mean for the greatest good of the greatest number. Shakespeare, the great teacher, shows us in ”Macbeth” what happens to the selfishly ambitious man.

Columbus got ahead by paying attention to small details. Whatever he did, he did to the best of his ability. Even when engaged in teaching geography to the Queen, Columbus was the best geography teacher he knew how to be. And before long he was made Royal Geographer.

In our daily lives let us all resolve to be good teachers of geography.

We may not all become Royal Geographers--but there will be to us the lasting satisfaction of having done our best. And that, as a greater than I has said, is ”more precious than rubies--yea, than much fine gold”.

Chapter Three

MAIN STREET: Plymouth, Ma.s.s.

In the Manner of Sinclair Lewis

I

1620.

Late autumn.

The sour liver-colored sh.o.r.es of America.

Breaking waves das.h.i.+ng too high on a stern and rockbound coast.

Woods tossing giant branches planlessly against a stormy sky.

Cape Cod Bay--wet and full of codfish. The codfish--wet and full of bones.

Standing on the deck of the anch.o.r.ed ”Mayflower”, gazing reflectively at the sh.o.r.es of the new world, is Priscilla Kennicott.

A youthful bride on a s.h.i.+p full of pilgrims; a lily floating in a dish of prunes; a cloissone vase in a cargo of oil cans.

Her husband joins her. Together they go forward to where their fellow pilgrims are preparing to embark in small boats.

Priscilla jumps into the bow of the first of these to shove off.