d lovely beyond expression. I hear the praises
of my great Creator sung upon the banks of those rivers now unknown to
song. Behold the delightful prospect! See the silver and gold of America
employed in the service of the Lord of the whole earth! See slavery,
with all its train of attendant evils, forever abolished! See a
communication opened through the whole continent, from North to South
and from East to West, through a most fruitful country. Behold the glory
of God extending, and the gospel spreading through the whole land!"

Of course, it was easy for a man to see and to hope and to say all this;
but it is a little curious, is it not, that he should have seen things
just as they have turned out?

In Mr. Winchester's day, the United States of America had not quite four
millions of inhabitants. In his day Virginia was the largest State--in
the matter of population--Pennsylvania was the second and New York
the third. Philadelphia was the greatest city, then followed New York,
Boston, Baltimore and Charleston. Chicago was not even thought of.

To-day, four hundred years after Columbus first saw American shores, one
hundred and sixteen years after the United States were started in life
by the Declaration of American Independence, these same struggling
States of one hundred years ago are joined together to make the greatest
and most prosperous nation in the world. With a population of more than
sixty-two millions of people; with the thirteen original States grown
into forty-four, with the population of its three largest cities--New
York; Philadelphia and Chicago--more than equal to the population of the
whole country one hundred years ago; with schools and colleges and happy
homes brightening the whole broad land that now stretches from ocean to
ocean, the United States leads all other countries in the vast continent
Columbus discovered. Still westward, as Columbus led, the nation
advances; and, in a great city that Columbus could never have imagined,
and that the prophet of one hundred years ago scarcely dreamed of, the
mighty Republic in 1892 invited all the rest of the world to join with
it in celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the Discovery of
America by Columbus the Admiral. And to do this celebrating fittingly
and grandly, it built up the splendid White City by the great Fresh
Water Sea.

Columbus was a dreamer; he saw such wonderful visions of what was to
be, that people, as we know, tapped their for