The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1892-10-26
Four Hundred Years.

Columbus was in the mind of all the
world on Friday. 1t was a great day
for the great navigator. In every city,
in every hamlet of the new world, mil
lions of marching school children, citi-
zens in their individual capacity and in
civic and military organizations, with
strains of inspiring music and myriad
banners, poets and orators in glowing
verse and fervid euloyy, united in rem
dering sincerest, meetest homage to the
name of Columbus. In the city of Chi
cago, the locality the national congress
had selected for the formal and elabo-
rate celebration of the four.hundredth
anniversary of the discovery of Amer
lea, the celebration of the day was on a
scale that far surpassed in extent and
grandeur anything of the kind the world
ever saw. Forty-four peerless repub-
lies and four vast territories, occupying
the midland belt of the great northland
continent, extending from the Atlantic
to the Pacific and inhabited by sixty five
millions of the freest and happiest
people on this round globe, participated
in the grand central celebration. The
discoverer was fifty honored. The
parade, the historical addresses, the
poetry and oratory of the occasion have
embodied Inscriptions of praise that are
not exaggeratiOns. They have not un-
duly magnifed the great achievement
of Columbus, or overestimated the rank
and Importance of his discovery; and
they have not too highly regarded the
quality and character of the man whose
belief in the existence of continents
beyond the watery wastes withstood the
manifold discouragements of eighteen
years of disputation, and intercession
and prayer for the means and the OPP
portunity to put his theories to prac-
teal test. The heroism of the discov-
erer, defying fate and sailing away
against time for a shore that clearly
existed in his steadfast faith, but was
myth, the dream of a crank, in the
minds of the ignorant, superstitious and
mutinous crew that rode the I'M
known waters with him, was not exalted
beyond its just measure. His charac-
ter was weighed in scales that were
balanced by the hands of reason and
justice, and it suffered no detriment.
In moral excellence, in enlightenment
and grandeur, it lowered far above the
dead level of the ignorant, superstitious
and semi barbaric age in which he lived.
1t was indeed great day for Column
bus-a day for whose dawning it was
worth waiting 400 years. 1t was meet
that the great Exposition should bear
the name Columbian. 1t was the irony of
fate that the continents toward whose
shores he opened the way should not
bear his name; and it was also the
irony of fate that the man who gave his
name to the two Americas was not
mentioned in all these observances
The whirlgig of time had brought in
its revenges.
1t is great nation-greatest in the
development and the establishing here
of the principles of human freedom and
their radiation hence throughout the
world; great in its marvellous material
development, great in moral, scientific,
social and artistic, literary and religious
development; great in the prosperity,
happiness and enlightenment of its
people, and their noble, generous and
chivalrous character, great in its Won
derful progress:
" For pass four feetng centuries back;
This land torpid giant slept
Wrapt in its mantle thick and black
That DER its mighty form had crept
Since time began and earth
Shot from its maker into birth"