FAME.
We find encouragement in every page of our country's history. Nowhere do we meet with examples more numerous and more brilliant of men who have risen above poverty and obscurity and every disadvantage to usefulness and honorable name. One whole vast continent was added to the geography of the world by the persevering efforts of a humble Genoese mariner, the great Columbus; who, by the steady pursuit of the enlightened conception he had formed of the figure of the earth, before any navigator had acted upon the belief that it was round, discovered the American continent. He was the son of a Genoese pilot, a pilot and seaman himself; and, at one period of his melancholy career, was reduced to beg his bread at the doors of the convents in Spain. But he carried within himself, and beneath a humble exterior, a spirit for which there was not room in Spain, in Europe, nor in the then known world; and which led him on to a height of usefulness and fame beyond that of all the monarchs that ever reigned.—Ibid.