"Say rather a cosmopolitan Idiot," said the Idiot. "Among my ancestors I number individuals of various nations, though I suppose that if we go back far enough we were all in the same boat as far as that is concerned. One of my great-great-grandfathers was a Scotchman, one of them was a Dutchman, another was a Spaniard, a fourth was a Frenchman. What the others were I don't know. It's a nuisance looking up one's ancestors, I think. They increase so as you go back into the past. Every man has had two grandfathers, four great-grandfathers, eight great-great-grandfathers, sixteen great-great-great-grandfathers, thirty-two fathers raised to the fourth power of great-grandness, and so on, increasing in number as you go further back, until it is hardly possible for any one to throw a brick into the pages of history without hitting somebody who is more or less responsible for his existence. I dare say there is a streak of Julius Cæsar in me, and I haven't a doubt that if our friend Mr. Pedagog here were to take the trouble to investigate, he would find that Cæsar and Cassius and Brutus could be numbered among his early progenitors—and now that I think of it, I must say that in my estimation he is an unusually amiable man, considering how diverse the nature of these men were. Think of it for a minute. Here a man unites in himself Cæsar and Cassius and Brutus, two of whom killed the third, and then, having quarrelled together, went out upon a battle-field and slaughtered themselves, after making extemporaneous remarks, for which this miserable world gives Shakespeare all the credit. It's worse than the case of a friend of mine, one of whose grandfathers was French and the other German."
"How did it affect him?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.
"It made him distrust himself," said the Idiot, with a smile, "and for that reason he never could get on in the world. When his Teutonic nature suggested that he do something, his Gallic blood would rise up and spoil everything, and vice versa. He was eternally quarrelling with himself. He was a victim to internal disorder of the worst sort."
"And what, pray, finally became of him?" asked the Clergyman.
"He shot himself in a duel," returned the Idiot, with a wink at the genial old gentleman who occasionally imbibed. "It was very sad."
"I've known sadder things," said Mr. Pedagog, wearily. "Your elaborate jokes, for instance. They are enough to make strong men weep."
"You flatter me, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot. "I have never in all my experience as a cracker of jests made a man laugh until he cried, but I hope to some day. But, really, do you know I think Columbus is an immensely overrated man. If you come down to it, what did he do? He went out to sea in a ship and sailed for three months, and when he least expected it ran slam-bang up against the Western Hemisphere. It was like shooting at a barn door with a Gatling gun. He was bound to hit it sooner or later."
"You don't give him any credit for tenacity of purpose or good judgment, then?" asked Mr. Brief.
"Of course I do. Plenty of it. He stuck to his ship like a hero who didn't know how to swim. His judgment was great. He had too much sense to go back to Spain without any news of something, because he fully understood that unless he had something to show for the trip, there would have been a great laugh on Queen Isabella for selling her jewels to provide for a ninety-day yacht cruise for him and a lot of common sailors, which would never have done. So he kept on and on, and finally some unknown lookout up in the bow discovered America. Then Columbus went home and told everybody that if it hadn't been for his own eagle eye emigration wouldn't have been invented, and world's fairs would have been local institutions. Then they got up a parade in which the King and Queen graciously took part, and Columbus became a great man. Meanwhile the unknown lookout who did discover the land was knocking about the town and thinking he was a very lucky fellow to get an extra glass of grog. It wasn't anything more than the absolute justice of fate that caused the new land to be named America and not Columbia. It really ought to have been named after that fellow up in the bow."
"But, my dear Idiot," put in the Bibliomaniac, "the scheme itself was Columbus's own. He evolved the theory that the earth is round like a ball."