I looked at the contract, and then thought of how Columbus died in
poverty and disgrace, and now, four hundred years after his death, the
world a-spendin' twenty million to honor his memory.

A sense of the folly and the strangeness of all things come over me like
a flood, and I bent my head in shame to think I belonged to a race of
bein's so ongrateful, and so lyin', and everything else.

I thought of that humble grave where a broken heart hid itself four
hundred years ago, and then I looked out towards that matchless White
City of gorgeous palaces riz up to his honor four hundred years too
late; and a sense of the futility of all things, the pity of it, the
vanity of all things here below, swept over me, and instinctively I lay
holt of my pardner's arm, and thought for a minute I must leave the
buildin'; but I thought better on't, and he thought I laid holt of his
arm as a mark of affection. And I didn't ondeceive him in it.

Then there is Columbuses commission as Admiral of the Ocean Seas.

His correspondence with Ferdinand and Isabella before and after his
discovery, and a host of other invaluable papers loaned by the Spanish
Goverment and the living descendants of Columbus in Spain. And there is
pieces of the house his father-in-law built for him--a cane made from
one of the jistes, and the shutters of one of the windows. Columbuses
own hand may have opened them shutters! O my heart! think on't.

And then there wuz the original copy of the first books relatin' to
America, over one hundred of 'em, obtained from the Vatican at Rome, and
museums, and libraries, in London, and Paris, and Madrid, and