He introduced the potato into Ireland
indirectly; and that caused such a rapid increase of population, that
the great famine was the result, and an enormous emigration to New
York--hence Tweed and the constituency of the Ring. Columbus is
really responsible for New York. He is responsible for our whole
tremendous experiment of democracy, open to all comers, the best
three in five to win. We cannot yet tell how it is coming out, what
with the foreigners and the communists and the women. On our great
stage we are playing a piece of mingled tragedy and comedy, with what
denouement we cannot yet say. If it comes out well, we ought to
erect a monument to Christopher as high as the one at Washington
expects to be; and we presume it is well to fire a salute
occasionally to keep the ancient mariner in mind while we are trying
our great experiment. And this reminds me that he ought to have had
a naval salute.

There is something almost heroic in the idea of firing off guns for a
man who has been stone-dead for about four centuries. It must have
had a lively and festive sound in Boston, when the meaning of the
salute was explained. No one could hear those great guns without a
quicker beating of the heart in gratitude to the great discoverer who
had made Boston possible. We are trying to "realize" to ourselves
the importance of the 12th of October as an anniversary of our
potential existence. If any one wants to see how vivid is the
gratitude to Columbus, let him start out among our business-houses
with a subscription-paper to raise money for powder to be exploded in
his honor. And yet Columbus was a well-meaning man; and if he did
not discover a perfect continent, he found the only one that was
left.

Columbus made voyaging on the Atlantic popular, and is responsible
for much of the delusion concerning it. Its great practical use in
this fast age is to give one an idea of distance and of monotony.

I have listened in my time with more or less pleasure to very
rollicking songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the spray and the
tempest's roar, the wet sheet and the flowing sea, a life on the
ocean wave, and all the rest of it. To paraphrase a land proverb,
let me write the songs of the sea, and I care not who goes to sea and
sings 'em. A square yard of solid ground is worth miles of the
pitching, turbulent stuff. Its inability to stand still for one
second is the plague of it. To lie on deck when the sun shines, and
swing u