Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-11-16
OF HISTORY.
4 Chapter ora tribes WHic4 Haze Deter
mined Great Eccnts.
fTncdno CtcuGar1

lAoluon StiIlua!u.
NJ. Fourier wrote a book on events
which never tool place. and Lord Beacons-
fields father was the author of & learned
essay on history which might have been
enacted. An equally curious volume
might be penned OF trifies which have de-
termined great events. It was but a trife
which gave Spain for so many generations
the lordship OF the New World, and en-
abled her by the wealth which she derived
from that source to become the most pow
erful nation in Europe. It is we'll known
that Columbus, dispirited by the refusals
which he met at so many courts
dispatched his brother Bartolomeo to
ask aid from Henry VII. of Eng
land. But on the way the messenger fell
into the hands Of pirates, and by the time
he reached London he was so destitute he
had to try and earn the money to clothe
himself in proper style before he could be
presented at court. But by this time he
was too late. Even the fact that Ferdi-
dand and Isabella supplied the funds to
equip the expedition, was mainly due to
the accident 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 a 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 a little later or a little
earlier at the monastery door,
the fate of Europe might have
been changed and the destiny of the An
glO-Saxon race altered. Three centuries
later it was again nearly revolutionized,
for in 1906 the English held Buenos Ayres;
and it is no secret that Napoleon was al
most persuaded TO abandon Europe as a
field for his ambition, and try what he
could accomplish in the way of carving
out an empire among the dissatisfied prov
inoes of South America. When Citizen
B~onaparte seemed likely to sit on the
throne of Louis Capet, he was on the
point Of offering his sword to the sultan
as at a later period Won Moltke actually
did. 1t is curious now to speculate what
might ave been the present state of the
Eastern question had Napoleon carried his
intentions into effect; or, supposing that
Moitke had remained in the Turkish serv-
ice, whether the Danish war would have
been fought, or Prussia's supremacy es-
tablished at Sadowa or Sedan.
The cropping of Louis Wis chin
brought on three centuries of bloOdshed,
and a sarcastic remark of Frederick the
Great on Elizabeth Petrovna, of Russo,
aroused that v%irtuous empress TO take such
a vigorous part in the Seven Years Wa
that at one time Prussia seemed well-nigh
stricken unto death. Even Catherine IL
profoundly suspicious of Potsdam, after
the scandal of Queen Elizabeth'-carefully
examined her husbands correspondence be-
fore she concluded an alliance with the
royal letter-writer. It is hardly forty years
since Louis Philippe threatened war against
the Texan republic because an irate citi-
zen had shot the tresspassing pigs of
the French Ambassador. As it was, he
prevented the Lone Star sovereignty from
floating their European loan, and thus the
king and the pigs combined FASTENED the
annexation of Texas to the United States.
The Dutch are said to have 'jockeyed'' US
out of Malacca in exchange for Java, BY
representing on the map, which our simple
minded ENJOYS. took for granted, the 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 commissioners
agreeing to the surrender of Oregon ''be-
cause a country in which salmon does not
| rise to the fly cannot be worth much.''
Laws have been altered through accidents
because the queens printer boy forgot to
deliver Lord Beaconsfeld amendment to
a bill.
But if trifes have determined the fate
of laws and nations accidents equally
small have caused men to follow pursuits
the results of which have been not much
less momentous to culture and civilization.
Father Malebranche devoted himself 10
philosophy after reading Describes
"LHomme;'' Cowley became a poet ow-
ing to his perusal of Sponsors FAIRY
Queen;'' and Sir Joshua Reynolds had new
er thought of painting until Richardson's
Treatise fell into his hands. Shakespeare
might have ended his life as a prosperous
wool-comber had he been a prudent young
tradesmalt Corneille showed no liking for
any literature except law until he fell in
love and felt compelled to tell the lady so
in poetry. and MoIiere might nave re.