"You are just in time," called Uncle Sam, as Joe came hurrying along.
"Cherries are ripe, cherries are ripe," sang Lucy, as her brother sat down on the steps, quite out of breath.
"Christopher!" exclaimed Joe as soon as he could speak. "I've had an awful long walk and I'm as tired as anything."
"You shouldn't say 'Christopher,' nor 'awful,' either, Joe. They are as bad as slang."
"You needn't preach, Lucy. I should like to know a better word than 'Christopher' in the whole language. Wasn't Columbus's name Christopher?"
"I know that. It is all the more reason for not making the word so common. He was too great a man. But, Uncle Sam, that makes me think of what Joe was saying the other night. He and I both think Columbia is a better name for our country than America."
"Let us see about that, children. I must tell you how it all happened.
"You remember, of course, that Columbus never knew what he had discovered. He thought he had visited the shores of Asia. Some years after his first great voyage another man from his own country of Italy sailed out into the west. His name was Americus Vespucius. A little hard to say, isn't it?
"He was a merchant who had made several long voyages already. He went farther south than Columbus and sailed along the shores of South America.
"'It is a vast country,' he said to himself, and he was the first one to call it the 'New World.' He wrote long letters telling of what he had seen. The man who printed these letters called the New World America in his honor. And it has been called America ever since. But I like Columbia best myself, children. The name is very dear to me."