wife; his friends had called him crazy, and forsaken him.
The council of wise men called by Ferdinand and Isabella ridiculed his
theory of reaching the east by sailing west.

"But the sun and moon are round," said Columbus, "why not the earth?"

"If the earth is a ball, what holds it up?" asked the wise men.

"What holds the sun and moon up?" inquired Columbus.

"But how can men walk with their heads hanging down, and their feet up,
like flies on a ceiling?" asked a learned doctor; "how can trees grow
with their roots in the air?"

"The water would run out of the ponds and we should fall off," said
another philosopher.

"This doctrine is contrary to the Bible, which says, 'The heavens are
stretched out like a tent:'--of course it is flat; it is rank heresy to
say it is round," said a priest.

Columbus left the Alhambra in despair, intending to offer his services
to Charles VII., but he heard a voice calling his name. An old friend
had told Isabella that it would add great renown to her reign at a
trifling expense if what the sailor believed should prove true. "It
shall be done," said Isabella, "I will pledge my jewels to raise the
money. Call him back."

Columbus turned and with him turned the world. Not a sailor would go
voluntarily; so the king and queen compelled them. Three days out, in
his vessels scarcely larger than fishing-schooners, the _Pinta_ floated
a signal of distress for a broken rudder. Terror seized the sailors,
but Columbus calmed their fears with pictures of gold and precious
stones from India. Two hundred miles west of the Canaries, the compass
ceased to point to the North Star. The sailors are ready to mutiny,
but he tells them the North Star is not exactly north. Twenty-three
hundred miles from home, though he tells them it is but seventeen
hundred, a bush with berries floats by, land birds fly near, and they
pick up a piece of wood curiously carved. On October 12, Columbus
raised the banner of Castile over the western world.

"How hard I worked at that tremendous shorthand, and all improvement
appertaining to it," said Dickens. "I will only add to what I have
already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured."

Cyrus W. Field had retired from business with a large fortune when he
became possessed with the idea that by means of a cable laid upon the
bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, telegraphic communi