aves were arranged many
boxes--nesting places, apparently, although none of the birds entered
the long room, which seemed free of any occupancy.

Mr. Jefferson stood for a moment, eagerly scanning the rear of the
tier of boxes. An exclamation broke from him. He hurried forward with
a sudden gesture to a little flag which stood up, like the tilt of a
fisherman on the ice, at the side of the box to which he pointed.

"Done!" said he.

He reached up to the box that he had indicated, pressed down a little
catch, opened the back and looked in. Again an exclamation escaped
him.

He put in a hand gingerly, and, tenderly imprisoning the bird which he
found therein, drew it forth, his long fingers eagerly lifting its
wings, examining its legs.

It could easily be seen that the box was arranged with a door on a
tripping-latch, so that the pigeon, on entering, would imprison
itself. It was apparent that Mr. Jefferson was depending upon the
natural homing instinct of his carrier pigeons to bring him some
message.

"I told them," said he, "to loose a half-dozen birds at once. See!
See!"

He unrolled from one leg of the prisoner a little cylinder of paper
covered with tinfoil and tied firmly in its place. It was the first
wireless message ever received at Washington. None since that time has
carried a greater burden. It announced a transaction in empires.

Mr. Jefferson read, and spread out the paper that his aide might read:

General Bonaparte signed May 2--Fifteen millions--Rejoice!

In no wider phrasing than that came the news of the great Louisiana
Purchase, by virtue of which this republic--whether by chance, by
result of greed warring with greed, or through the providence of
Almighty God, who shall say?--gained the great part of that vast and
incalculably valuable realm which now reaches from the Mississippi to
the Pacific Ocean. What wealth that great empire held no man had
dreamed, nor can any dream today; for, a century later, its story is
but beginning.

Century on century, that story still will be in the making. A home for
millions of the earth's best, a hope for millions of the earth's less
fortunate--granary of the peoples, mint of the nations, birthplace and
growing-ground of the new race of men--who could have measured that
land then--who could measure it today?

And its title passed, announced in seven words, carried by a bird
wandering in the air, but bound unerringly to the ark of God's
covenan