Little wonder that the whole world takes from the life of Columbus one of its best-beloved illustrations of the absolute power of faith. To a faithless world he made a proposal, and the world did not hear it. To that faithless world he made it again and again, and at last roused the world to ridicule it and to contradict it. To the same faithless world he still made it year after year; and at last the world said that, when it was ready, it would try if he were right; to which his only reply is that he is ready now, that the world must send him now on the expedition which shall show whether he is right or wrong. The world, tired of his importunity, consents, unwillingly enough, that he shall try the experiment. He tries it; he succeeds; and the world turns round and welcomes him with a welcome which it cannot give to a conqueror. In a moment the grandeur of his plans is admitted, their success is acknowledged, and his place is fixed as one of the great men of history.
Give me white paper!
The sheet you use is black and rough with smears
Of sweat and grime and fraud and blood and tears,
Crossed with the story of men's sins and fears,
Of battle and of famine all those years
When all God's children have forgot their birth
And drudged and fought and died like beasts of earth.
Give me white paper!
One storm-trained seaman listened to the word;
What no man saw he saw, and heard what no man heard.
For answer he compelled the sea
To eager man to tell
The secret she had kept so well;
Left blood and woe and tyranny behind,
Sailing still West that land newborn to find,
For all mankind the unstained page unfurled,
Where God might write anew the story of the world.
Edward Everett Hale
Columbus
"Admiral at the Helm"
The fame of Columbus is not local or limited. It does not belong to any single country or people. It is the proud possession of the whole civilized world. In all the transactions of history there is no act which for vastness and performance can be compared with the discovery of the continent of America, "the like of which was never done by any man in ancient or in later times."
James Grant Wilson