Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1881-09-15
SOME ACCIDENTS OF HISTORY.
A Chapter on Trifles Which Have De-
termined Great Events.

A Chapter on Trifles Which Have De-
termined Great Events.
London Standard.
M. Fournier wrote a book on events
which never took place, and Lord Bea-
consfelds father was the author of a
learned essay on history which might
have been enacted. An equally curious
volume might be penned on trifes
which have determined great events.
1t was but trife which gave Spain
for so many generations the lordship
OF the new world, and enabled her by
the wealth which she derived from
that source to become the most power.
full nation in Europe. 1t is we'll
known that Columbus, dispirited by
the refusals which he met at so many
courts, dispatched his brother Bartol-
Omeo to ask aid from Henry VII. of
England. But on the way the messen-
ger fell into the hands of pirates, and
by the time he reached London was so
destitute he had to try and earn the
money to cloth himself in proper style
before he could be presented at court.
But by this time it was too late.
Even the fact that Ferdinand and Isa-
bella supplied the funds to equip the
expedition was mainly due to the acci-
dent that Juan Perez de Marchena, the
queens confessor, happened to be pas
| sing at the very moment when the
weary mariner was knocking at the
door of the La Rabida monastery to
beg little bread and water for his boy
Diego, and was struck with the noble
face of the dusty pedestrian. Had
Bartolomeo Colon reached London in
time, had Christoval been by any
chance little later or a little earlier
at the monastery door the fate of Eu-
rope might have been changed and the
destiny cf the Anglo-Saxon race al
tered. Three centuries later it was
again almost revolutioniZed, for in
1906 the English held Beunos Ayers,
and it is no secret that Napoleon was
almost persuaded to abandon Europe
as field for his ambition, and try what
he could accomplish in the way of
carving out an empire among the dis
satisfied provinces Of South America.
When Citizen Bonaparte seemed little
likely to sit on the throne of Louis
Capet he was on the point of Offering
his sword to the sultan, as at later Pc
riOd Won Moltke actually did. 1t is GU
rious now to speculate what would
now have been the present state of the
eastern question had Napoleon carried
his intentions into effect. or supposing
that MOltke had remained in the Turk
ish service whether the Danish war
would have been fought, or Prussia's
supremacy established at Sadowa or
Sedan.
The cropping of Louis Wis chin
brought on three centuries of blood
shed, and sarcastic remark of Fred
erick the Great on Elizabeth Petrovna,
of Russia, reused that virtuous en-
press to take such a vigorous part in
the seven years war that at one time
Prussia seemed well-nigh stricken
unto death. Even Catherine II.-pro-
foundly suspicious of Potsdam after
the scandal about Queen Elizabeth
carefully examined her husbands cor
respondence before she concluded an
alliance with the royal letter writer. 1t
is hardly forty years since Louis Phil
ippe threatened war against the Texan
republic because an irate citizen had
shot the trespassing pigs of the French
ambassador. AS it was he prevented
the Lone Star sovereignty from float
ing their European loan, and thus the
king and the pigs combined hastened
the annexation of Texas to the United
States. The Dutch are said to have
'jockeyed" us out of Malacca in ex-
change for Java by representing on
the map, which our simple-minded en-
voys took for granted, one territory as
large and the other as small, and
among the most firmly rooted tradi-
tions of American diplomacy is one
which represents the English commits
sioners as agreeing to the surrender of
Oregon, because country in which a
salmon does not rise to the fly can not
be worth much" Laws have been al
tered through accidents before the
queens printers boy forgot to deliver
Lord Beaconsfsld's amendment to a
bill.
But if trifies have determined the
fate of laws and nations, accidents
equally small have caused men to fol.
low pursuits the results of which have
been not much less momentous to cul-
ture and civilization. Father Male
branche devoted himself to philosophy
after reading Descartes' "L'Homme;"
Cowley became poet owing to his pc
rusal of Sponsors FAIRY Queen" and
Sir Joshua Reynolds had never thought
of painting until Richardson's "Treat-
Use" fell into his hands. Shakespeare
might have ended his life as a prosper
GUS wool-comber had he been a pru-
dent young tradesman; Cornellie
showed no liking for any literature ex-
cept the law until he fell in love, and
felt himself compelled to tell the lady SO
in poetry; and Moliere might have
remained making tapestry had not his
grandmother nettled his pride by wish
ing that he could be an actor like Mon
rose. Balboa might never have dis
covered the Pacific had he not been un-
successful as shop-keeper in Hispa-
niola, and found it necessary to flee to
the mainland, concealed from his cred
itors in a cask on board Eucisco's ves-
sci; and it is certain that had Cortez
become well-briefed lawyer in Sala-
manca he weuld never have lived to
proudly tell Charles V. that he had
given him more provinces than his
father had left bim cities. Ignatius
Loyola was a soldier, and the order of
Jesuits might never have been found
ed had he not accidentally beguiled the
tedium of inaction necessitated by a
wound with reading "The Lives OF
Saints" Gibbon determined to write
his famous work after listening to the
monks singing vespers in the temple Of
Jupiter, at Rome; and La Fontaine
was stimulated to cultivate literature
| after hearing some verses of Malherbe.
| Faraday might have remained Jour.