LET us suppose that the history of the whole world is spread out before us like a picture, and that we are looking down on it. What will we see? Well, we will see places where a terrible storm seems to have swept over the picture, and left only darkness and ruin in its track. And we will see other places where the sun seems to have poured down its bright beams, and all is clear and bright and beautiful. The dark places are those of war; the bright places are those of peace. All through history there have been times when men have gone out to kill and burn and do all the harm they could; and there have been other times when they stayed at home to work, and build up what war had cast down, and bring plenty and happiness to the nations.
In the picture of our own history we see such dark and bright places. And the darkest of them all is the terrible Civil War, the story of which you have just read. For in this war our people fought against and killed one another, and all the harmwas done at home, instead of in foreign lands. The war was a dreadful one. Hundreds of thousands of our people were killed or wounded, and the ground in hundreds of places was red with blood. Houses, barns and factories were burned, railroads were torn up, ships were sunk, growing crops were trampled into the earth. And last of all came that horrid murder of our good and great President Lincoln, one of the best and noblest men who ever sat in the presidential chair. Such is war—the most frightful thing we can think of or talk about. Some of my young friends may like to play soldier; but if they should grow up and get to be real soldiers they would find out what war means. Now, if we look again at the picture of our history, we shall see a great bright space of peace following the dark space of the Civil War. That is what I wish to tell you about now—the reign of peace, when everybody was busy at work in building up what had been torn down by the red hand of war, and our country grew faster than it had ever grown before.
There is one thing I must say here. I have told you that slavery was the cause of the war. If there had been no slaves in the country there would have been no war. And the one good thing the war did for us was to get rid of the slaves. President Lincoln declared that all the slaves should be free, and since that time there has notbeen a slave in the land. So we can never have a war for that cause again.
When the war was done, the soldiers marched back to their homes. Their old battle-flags, rent and torn by bullets, were put away as valued treasures; their rusty rifles, which had killed thousands of men, were given back to the government; they took up their axes, they went into the fields with their ploughs, they entered the workshops with their tools, and soon they were all at work again, as if they had never seen a field of battle.
This took place long before any of my young readers were born. But there are many old soldiers living who took part in it, and when you see the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, marching with their ragged flags and battle-scarred faces, it may bring to you some vision of what they have seen, and make you think of the fallen comrades they left behind, dead or bleeding upon the battle-field.
During your short lives there has been no war which came near to us in our homes. The angel of peace has spread her white wings over our land, and plenty and prosperity have been the rule. None of our young folks have known what it is for an army of soldiers to march past their homes, destroying and burning, and leaving ashes and ruins where there had been happy homes and fertile fields. But in the past of our country thishappened to many as young as you, and they were glad that their lives were left them, after everything else was gone.
Let us put the thought of war out of our minds, and go on to see what took place under the blessed reign of peace. The first thing of which I shall tell you was one of the most wonderful of all. You know how the telegraph wires spread over the country until they were many thousands of miles in length. In the next chapter you may read how the electric telegraph was invented. In the year after the war ended a still greater thing was done. A telegraph cable was laid under the ocean from Europe to America. This had been done before, but it had proved a failure. The new cable was a success, and since then a man in London has been able to talk with a man in New York as if he were not a hundred yards away. Of course, I do not mean with his voice, but with the click of the telegraph instrument.
The year after that a great addition was made to the United States. There was a large region in the north, known as Russian America, which Russia offered to sell to this country for seven million dollars. Many people talked about this as some of their forefathers had talked about the purchase of Louisiana by President Jefferson. They said that it was a land of ice and snow which Russia wanted to get rid of, and that it would beof no use to anybody. But it was bought for all that, and it has proven a very good bargain.
This country we now call Alaska. We get there all the sealskins from which the rich and warm cloaks of the ladies are made. And most of the canned salmon, which some of you think very good food, come from Alaska. That country is rich in furs and fish and timber; and that is not all, for it is rich in gold. Millions of dollars worth of gold are obtained there every year. It has been something like California, whose gold was not found till Americans got there to dig.
These are not the only things that took place in the years after the war. Railroads were being built in all directions. East and west, north and south, they went, and travel became easier than it had been before. The greatest thing done in this way was the building of a railroad across the mountains and the plains to San Francisco, on the far Pacific coast, three thousand miles away from the Atlantic shores. Before that time men who wanted to go to California had to drag along over thousands of miles in slow wagon trains and spend weeks and months on the road. Now they could go there in less than a week. It was the longest railroad that the world had ever seen, up to that time.
While all this was going on, people were comingto this country in great multitudes, crossing the ocean to find new homes in our happy land. They did not have to come in slow sailing ships as in former times, but were brought here in swift steamships, that crossed the seas almost as fast as the iron horse crossed the land. All these new people went to work, some in the cities and some in the country, and they all helped to make our nation rich and powerful.
But you must not think that everything went well, and that we had no dark days. Every country has its troubles, even in times of peace. War is not the only trouble. Great fires break out, storms sweep over the land, earthquakes shake down cities, and many other disasters take place. Of all these things, fire, when it gets beyond control, is the most terrible; and it is of a frightful fire that I wish to speak.
About the year 1831 a small fort stood near the shore of Lake Michigan, and around this a few pioneer families had built their homes, which were only rude log houses. In 1871, forty years afterwards, the fort and the huts had long been gone and a large city stood at that place. Its growth had been wonderful. Only forty years old and already it was one of the great cities of the country. This was the famous city of Chicago, which has grown more rapidly than any other great city ever known.
One night in October a dreadful thing took place in this city. A cow kicked over a lamp in a stable. The straw on the floor took fire, and in a minute the blaze shot up into the air. The people ran for water, but they were too slow, and in a few minutes the whole stable was in flames. You may think that this was not of much account, but there happened to be a gale of wind, and soon great blazing fragments were flying through the air and falling on roofs squares away. It was not long before there was a terrible fire over almost the entire city.
Chicago at that time was mostly built of wood, and the fire spread until it looked as if the whole great city would be burnt to ashes. For two days it kept on burning until the richest part of the city had gone up in smoke and flame. Many people were burned to death in the streets and two hundred million dollars worth of property was destroyed. It was the most frightful fire of modern times. But Americans do not stop for fire or water. The city was built up again, far handsomer than before, and it is now one of the greatest cities, not only of this country, but of the world.
This was not the only disaster which came upon the country. In 1886 there was a frightful earthquake in South Carolina, that shook down a great part of the city of Charleston. And in 1889 therewas a terrible flood that swept away the young city of Johnstown, in Pennsylvania, and drowned more than two thousand people. And there were tornadoes, or wind storms, in the west that blew down whole towns as you might blow down a house of cardboard with your breath. And there were great strikes and riots that were almost like war, and various other troubles. But all these could not stop the growth of the country. Every year it became richer. New people came, new factories were built, new fields were farmed, and the United States seemed like a great hive of industry, and its people like so many bees, working away, day by day, and gathering wealth as bees gather honey.
It not only got many of the old articles of wealth, but it found many new ones also. Never was there a country with so many inventors or men that have made things new and useful to everybody, and never were there more wonderful inventions. I have told you about some of our inventors; I shall have to speak of some more of them. There were hundreds of men busily at work at inventing new machines and tools, new things to help everybody—the farmer, the merchant, the workman in the factory, and the cook in the kitchen. It went on so that there was not much done by hand, as in old times, but nearly everything was done by machine.
IT is not a pleasant thing to go hungry for twenty-four hours and to go many days without half enough to eat. I think all my readers will agree with me in this. I fancy none of you would like to find an empty table before you when the dinner bell rings. But this is a thing that has happened to many inventors; and one of these was Samuel F. B. Morse, to whose genius we owe the electric telegraph.
The Wright Brothers and Their Famous Aeroplane.The Wright Brothers and Their Famous Aeroplane.
You know about the invention of the steamboat, the locomotive, the cotton-gin and various other early inventions; but there have been many later inventions, and one of the most important of these is the telegraph, which tells us every day what is taking place over the whole world.
Professor Morse was a New York artist who studied painting in Europe, and in the year 1832 took passage home in the ship "Sully." One day a talk went on in the cabin of the ship. Dr. Jackson, one of the passengers, told how some persons in Paris had sent an electric current through several miles of wire in less than a second of time.
"If that is the case," said Morse, "why could not words and sentences be sent in the same way?"
"That's a good idea. It would be a great thing if we could send news as fast as lightning," said one of the passengers.
"Why can't we?" said Morse; "I think we can do it."
Very likely the rest of the passengers soon forgot all about that conversation, but Morse did not. During the remainder of the voyage he was very quiet and kept much to himself. He was thinking over what he had heard. Before the ship had reached New York he had worked out a plan of telegraphing. He proposed to carry the wire in tubes underground, and to use an alphabet of dots and dashes, the same that is used by telegraphers to-day.
When he went on shore Morse said to the captain: "Captain, if you should hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship 'Sully.'"
"If I can make it go ten miles without stopping, I can make it go round the world," he said to a passenger.
But it is easier to think out a thing than to put it in practice. Poor Morse was more than ten years in working out his plans and getting people to help him in them. He got out of money andwas near starving, but he kept at it. After three years he managed to send a message through seventeen hundred feet of wire. He could read it, but his friends could not, and no one was ready to put money in such a scheme. They looked at it as a toy to amuse children. Then he went to Europe and tried to get money there, but he found the people there as hard to convince as those in America.
"No one is in such a hurry for news as all that," they said. "People would rather get their news in the good old way. Your wires work, Mr. Morse, but it would take a great deal of money to lay miles of them underground, and we are not going to take such chances as that with our money."
Mr. Morse next tried to get Congress to grant him a sum of money. He wanted to build a wire from Baltimore to Washington and show how it would work. But it is never easy to get money from Congress, and he kept at it for five years in vain.
It was the 3d of March, 1843. At twelve o'clock that night the session of Congress would end. Morse kept about the Senate chamber till nearly midnight, in hopes his bill would pass. Then he gave it up in despair and went to his boarding house. He was sure his little bill would not be thought of in the crowd of business beforeCongress and was greatly depressed in consequence.
He came down to breakfast the next morning with a very sad face, hardly knowing how he was to pay his board and get home. He was met by a young lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, who came to him with a smile.
"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Morse," she said.
"For what, my dear friend?"
"For the passage of your bill."
"What!" he said, in great astonishment; "the passage of my bill?"
"Yes; do you not know of it?"
"No; it cannot be true!"
"You came home too early last night, Mr. Morse. Your bill has passed, and I am happy to be the first to bring you the good news."
"You give me new life, Miss Ellsworth," he said. "For your good news I promise you this: when my telegraph line is laid, you shall have the honor of selecting the first message to be sent over it."
Congress had granted only thirty thousand dollars. It was not much, but Morse went actively to work. He wanted to dig a ditch to lay his pipe in, through which the wire was to run. He got another inventor to help him, Ezra Cornell,who afterwards founded Cornell University. Mr. Cornell invented a machine which dug the ditch at a great rate, laid the pipe, and covered it in. In five minutes it laid and covered one hundred feet of pipe.
But Cornell did not think the underground wire would work.
"It will work," said Morse. "While I have been fighting Congress, men have laid short lines in England which work very well. What can be done there can be done here."
For all that, it would not work. A year passed and only seven thousand dollars of the money were left, and all the wires laid were of no use.
"If it won't go underground we must try and coax it to go over-ground," said Morse.
Poles were erected; the wire was strung on glass insulators; it now worked to a charm. On May 11, 1844, the Whig National Convention at Baltimore nominated Henry Clay for President, and the news was sent to Washington in all haste by the first railroad train. But the passengers were surprised to find that they brought stale news; everybody in Washington knew it already. It had reached there an hour or two before by telegraph. That was a great triumph for Morse. The telegraph line was not then finished quite to Baltimore. When it reached there, on May24th, the first message sent was one which Miss Ellsworth had chosen from the Bible, "What hath God wrought?" God had wrought wonderfully indeed, for since then the electric wire has bound the ends of the earth together.
If I should attempt to tell you about all our inventors I am afraid it would be a long story. There is almost no end to them, and many of them invented wonderful machines. I might tell you, for instance, about Thomas Blanchard, who invented the machine by which tacks are made, dropping them down as fast as a watch can tick. This is only one out of many of his inventions. One of them was a steamboat to run in shallow water, and which could go hundreds of miles up rivers where Fulton's steamboat would have run aground.
Then there was Cyrus McCormick, who invented the reaping machine. When he showed his reaper at the London World's Fair in 1851, the newspapers made great fun of it. The London "Times" said it was a cross between a chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying-machine. But when it was put in a wheat-field and gathered in the wheat like a living and thinking machine, they changed their tune, and the "Times" said it was worth more than all the rest of the Exhibition. This was the first of the great agriculturalmachines. Since then hundreds have been made, and the old-fashioned slow hand-work in the fields is over. McCormick made a fortune out of his machine. I cannot say that of all inventors, for many of them had as hard a time as Morse with his telegraph. Two of them, Charles Goodyear and Elias Howe, came as near starving as Professor Morse.
All the rubber goods we have to-day we owe to Charles Goodyear. Before his time India-rubber was of very little use. It would grow stiff in the winter and sticky in the summer, and people said it was a nuisance. What was wanted was a rubber that would stand heat and cold, and this Goodyear set himself to make.
After a time he tried mixing sulphur with the gum, and by accident touched a red-hot stove with the mixture. To his delight the gum did not melt. Here was the secret. Rubber mixed with sulphur and exposed to heat would stand heat and cold alike. He had made his discovery, but it took him six years more to make it a success, and he never made much money from it. Yet everybody honors him to-day as a great inventor.
Elias Howe had as hard a time with the sewing machine. For years he worked at it, and when he finished it nobody would buy it or use it. He went to London, as Morse had done, and had the same bad luck. He had to pawn his modeland patent papers to get home again. His wife was very sick, and he reached home only in time to see her die.
Poor fellow! life was very dark to him then. His invention had been stolen by others, who were making fortunes out of it while he was in need of bread. Friends lent him money and he brought suit against these robbers, but it took six years to win his rights in the courts. In the end he grew rich and gained great honor from his invention.
There has been no man more talked of in our time than Thomas A. Edison. All of you must have heard of him. He went into business when he was only twelve years old, selling newspapers and other things on the cars, and he was so bright and did so well that he was able to send his parents five hundred dollars a year. When he was sixteen he saved the child of a station-master from being run over by a locomotive, and the father was so grateful that he taught him how to telegraph. He was so quick in his work that he become one of the best telegraph operators in the United States.
After he grew up Edison began to invent. He worked out a plan by which he could send two messages at once over one wire. He kept at this till he could send sixteen messages over a wire, eight one way and eight the other. He made money out of his inventions, but the telegraphcompanies made much more. Instead of sending fifty or sixty words a minute, he showed them how they could send several thousand words a minute.
Then he began experimenting with the electric light. He did not invent this, but he made great improvements in it. The electric light could be made, but it could not be controlled and used before Edison taught people how to keep it in its little glass bulb. How brilliantly the streets, the stores, and many of the houses are now lit up by electricity. All from Edison's wonderful discoveries.
Then there was the telephone, or talking telegraph, which many of you may have used yourselves. That was not known before 1876; but people now wonder how they ever got along without it. It is certainly very wonderful, when you have to speak with somebody a mile or a hundred miles away, to ring him up and talk with him over the telephone wire as easily as if you were talking with some one in the next room. The telephone, as I suppose you know, works by electricity. It is only another form of the telegraph. The telephone was not invented by Edison, but by another American named Alexander Bell. But Edison improved it. He added the "transmitter," which is used in all telephones, and is very important indeed. So we must give credit first to Bell and second to Edison for the telephone.
Edison's most wonderful invention is the phonograph. This word means "sound writer." One of you may talk with a little machine, and the sound of your voice will make marks on a little roll of gelatine or tinfoil within. Then when the machine is set going you may hear your own voice coming back to you. Or by the use of a great trumpet called a megaphone, it may be heard all over a large room.
The wonderful thing is that the sound of a man's voice may be heard long after he is dead. If they had possessed the phonograph in old times we might be able to hear Shakespeare or Julius Cæsar speaking to-day. Very likely many persons who live a hundred or two hundred years from now may hear Edison's voice coming out of one of his own machines. Does not this seem like magic?
In every way this is a wonderful age of invention. Look at the trolley car, shooting along without any one being able to see what makes it move. Look at the wheels whirling and lights flashing and stoves heating from electric power. Steam was the most powerful thing which man knew a century ago. Electricity has taken its place as the most powerful and marvelous thing we know to-day. More wonderful than anything I have said is the power we now have of telegraphing without wires, and of telephoning in the same way. Thus men can now stand on the shore and talk withtheir friends hundreds of miles away on the broad sea.
Such are some of the inventions which have been made in recent times. If you ask for more I might name the steam plow, and the typewriter, and the printing machine, and the bicycle, and the automobile, and the air-ship, and a hundred others. But they are too many for me to say anything about, so I shall have to stop right here.
VERY likely many of my young readers live in the city of Philadelphia, which was founded by William Penn more than two hundred years ago on the banks of the broad Delaware River, and where now many more than a million people make their homes. And many of you who do not live there, but who love your country and are proud of its history, are likely to go there some time during your lives, to visit the birthplace of your noble nation.
Have you ever thought that the United States, as an independent nation, was born in Philadelphia? In that city stands the stately Independence Hall, in which the Declaration of Independence was made and signed. You may see there the famous old bell, which rang out "Liberty throughout the land!" And you may stand in the room in which our grand Constitution was formed. So Philadelphia should be a place of pilgrimage to all true-hearted Americans, who wish to see where their country was born.
It was such a place of pilgrimage in the year 1876. Then from every part of our country, from the North, the South, the West and the East, our people made their way in thousands towards that great city, which was then the proud center of all American thought. A hundred years had passed from the time the famous Declaration was signed, and the Centennial Anniversary which marked the one hundredth year after this great event was being celebrated in the city which may be called the cradle of the American nation.
A grand exhibition was held. It was called a "World's Fair," for splendid objects were sent to it from all parts of the world, and our own country sent the best of everything it had to show, from Maine to California. On the broad lawns of Fairmount Park many handsome buildings were erected, all filled with objects of use or beauty, and more than ten million people passed through the gates, glad to see what America and the world had to show.
If you wish to know what our own country showed, I may say that the most striking things were its inventions, machines that could do almost everything which the world wants done. And the newest and most wonderful of all these things was the telephone. This magical invention was shown there to the people for the firsttime, and the first voice shouted "Hallo!" over the talking wire.
In the years that followed centennial celebrations became common. In 1881 the centennial anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallis was celebrated at Yorktown. In 1882 the bi-centennial (the two hundredth anniversary) of the landing of William Penn was celebrated at Philadelphia. A vessel that stood for the old ship "Welcome" sailed up the stream, and a man dressed like the famous old Quaker landed and was greeted by a number of men who took the part of Indian chiefs.
In 1887 Philadelphia had another grand anniversary, that of the signing of the Constitution of the United States, which was celebrated by magnificent parades and processions, while the whole city was dressed in the red, white and blue. In 1889 New York celebrated the next grand event in the history of the nation, the taking of the oath by Washington, our first President.
The next great anniversary was that of the discovery of America by Columbus, four hundred years before. This was celebrated by a wonderfully splendid exhibition at Chicago, the most beautiful that the world had ever seen. Columbus landed in October, 1492, and the buildings were dedicated in October, 1892, but the exhibition did not take place till the next year. Those who sawthis exhibition will never forget it, and very likely some of my readers were among them. Its buildings were like fairy palaces, so white and grand and beautiful; and at night, when it was lit up by thousands of electric lights, the whole place looked like fairy land. The world will not soon see anything more beautiful.
I cannot tell of all the exhibitions. There were others, at New Orleans, Atlanta, and other cities, but I think you will be satisfied with hearing about the large ones. The Centennial at Philadelphia set the fashion. After that, cities all over the country wanted to have their great fairs, and many of the little towns had their centennial celebrations, with music and parades, speeches and fireworks.
During all this time the country kept growing. People crossed the ocean in millions. Our population went up, not like a tree growing, but like a deer jumping. In 1880 we had 50,000,000 people. In 1900 we had half as many more. Just think of that! Over 25,000,000 people added in twenty years! How many do you think we will have when the youngest readers of this book get to be old men and women? I am afraid to guess.
As our people increased in number they spread more widely over the country. Railroads were built everywhere, steamboats ran on all thestreams, telegraphs and telephones came near to every man's front door, the post-offices spread until letters and newspapers and packages were carried to the smallest village in the land. Nobody wanted to stay at home, in the old fashion. People thought nothing of a journey across the continent or the ocean. Wherever they were, they could talk with their friends by letter or telegraph, and they could go nowhere that the newspaper could not follow them.
So the waste places of the country began rapidly to fill up. If you have ever seen an old-time map of our country you must have noticed places in the West marked "great desert," or "unknown territory," or by some such name. But people made their way into these unknown regions and filled them up. First they went with their families and household goods in great wagons. Then they went far more swiftly in railroad trains. Here they settled down and began farming; farther on, where there was not rain enough to farm, they raised cattle and sheep on the rich grasses; still farther, in the mountain regions, they set to work mining, getting gold, silver, copper, iron and coal from the hard rocks.
Cities grew up where the Indian and the buffalo had roamed. The factory followed the farmer; the engine began to puff its steam into the air, the wheels to turn, the machines to work, goods of allkinds to be made. The whole country became like a great hive of workers, where everybody was busy, and thousands of the people grew rich.
Custer's Last Fight.Custer's Last Fight.
But all this great western country was not given up to the farmer, the miner and the wood-chopper. There were places which nature had made beautiful or wonderful or grand, and these were kept as places for all the people to visit. One of these was the beautiful Yosemite Valley, in California; another was the wonderful Yellowstone Park, with its marvelous spouting springs; others were the groves of giant trees; still others were great forests, from which the government told the wood-choppers to keep out, for the woods had been set aside for the good or the pleasure of all the people of the land.
Some of you may ask, what became of the old people of the country—the Indians, who were spread all over the West? There were hundreds of tribes of them, and many of them were bold and brave, and when they saw the white men pushing into their country they fought fiercely for their homes. But they could not stand before the guns of the pioneers and the cannon of the soldiers, and in time they were all forced to submit. Then places were set aside for them and they were made to live in them. The Indians were not always treated well. They were robbed and cheated in a hundred ways. But that, I hope, is all overnow, for they are being well cared for and educated, and they seem likely, before many years, to become good and useful citizens of our country.
Now I have another story to tell. Our Civil War, which you have read about, ended in 1865. For thirty-three years after that—one-third of a century—we were at peace at home and abroad, and our country had the wonderful growth of which you have just read. Then, in 1898, almost at the end of the century, war came again. By good luck, it was not a big war this time, and it was one I can tell you about in a few words.
It was pity and charity that brought us into this war. South of Florida is the large and fertile island of Cuba, which had long belonged to Spain, and whose people had been very badly treated. At length they said they could stand it no longer, so they took their guns, left their homes, and went to war with the soldiers of Spain. For two years they fought bravely. Their old men, and their women and children, who had stayed at home, helped them all they could; so the Spaniards drove these from their homes into the cities, and left them there with hardly anything to eat. Thousands of these poor wretches starved to death.
You may be sure that our people thought this very wicked. They said that it ought to be stopped; but Spain would not do what they wished. Then they sent food to the starving people. Someof it got to them and some of it was used by others. Everybody in our country felt very badly to see this terrible affair going on at our very doors, and the government was told that it ought to take some action. What the government did was to send one of its war-vessels, the "Maine," to the harbor of Havana, the capital of Cuba.
Then something took place that would have made almost any country go to war. One dark night, while the "Maine" floated on the waters of the harbor, and nearly all her crew were fast asleep in their berths, a terrible explosion was heard under her, and the good vessel was torn nearly in half. In a minute she sank into the muddy bottom of the harbor, and hundreds of her sleeping crew were drowned. Only the captain and some of the officers and men escaped alive.
I fancy all of you must know how angry our people felt when they heard of this dreadful event. You were angry yourselves, no doubt, and said that the Spaniards had done this and ought to be punished by having Cuba taken from them. I do not think there were many Americans who did not feel like taking revenge for our poor murdered sailors.
War soon came. In April, 1898, the Congress declared war against Spain and a strong fleet of iron-clad ships was sent to Cuba. An army was gathered as quickly as possible, and the soldierswere put on board ship and sailed away to the south. There was a Spanish fleet in the harbor of Santiago de Cuba and an American fleet outside keeping the ships of Spain like prisoners in the harbor; so the soldiers were sent to that place, and it was not long before an army was landed and was marching towards the city of Santiago. I am glad to say that the fighting did not last very long. There was a bold charge up hill by the Rough Riders and others in the face of the Spanish guns, and the Spanish army was driven back to the city. Here they were shut up and soon surrendered, and the war in Cuba was at an end.
But the iron-clad ships in the harbor were not given up. On the 3d of July a brave dash for liberty was made. They came out at full speed where our great ships lay waiting, and soon there was one of the strangest fights that had ever been seen. The Spanish ships rushed through the waters near the coast, firing as they fled. After them came the American ships at full speed, firing as they followed. But not many of the Spanish halls touched the American ships, while the great guns of the Americans raked the Spaniards fore and aft.
Soon some of their ships were on fire and had to be run ashore. In an hour or two the chase was at an end and the fine Spanish fleet was sunk and burning, with hundreds of its crew killed, whileon the American ships only one man had been killed. It was a wonderful flight and fight. I should tell you more about it, only that I have another story of the same kind to relate.
Far away from Cuba, on the other side of the world, in the broad Pacific Ocean, near the coast of China, is a great group of islands called the Philippines, which had long belonged to Spain. Here, in the harbor of Manila, the capital of the islands, was a Spanish fleet. There was an American fleet in one of the harbors of China, under the command of Commodore George Dewey. And as soon as war had been declared Dewey was ordered to go to Manila and sink or take the Spanish fleet.
Dewey was a man who thought it his duty to obey orders. He had been told to sink or take the Spanish fleet, and that was what he meant to try his best to do. Over the waters sped his ships, as swiftly as steam could carry them, and into the harbor of Manila they went at midnight while deep darkness lay upon the waters. It was early morning of the 1st of May when the American ships rounded up in front of the city and came in sight of the Spanish fleet. This lay across the mouth of a little bay with forts to guard it on the land at each side.
It was a great danger which Commodore Dewey and his bold followers faced. Beforethem lay the Spanish ships and the forts. There were torpedo boats which might rush out and sink them. There were torpedoes under the waters which might send the flagship itself to the bottom. Some men would have stopped and felt their way, but George Dewey was not that kind of a man. Without stopping for a minute after his long journey from China, he dashed on with the fleet and ordered his men to fire. Soon the great guns were roaring and the air was full of fire and smoke.
Round and round went the American ships, firing as they passed. Every shot seemed to tell. It was not long before some of the Spanish ships were blazing, while hardly a ball had touched an American hull. After an hour or two of this hot work Dewey drew out and gave his men their breakfast. Then back he came and finished the job. When he was done, the whole Spanish fleet was sunk and burning, with hundreds of its men dead and wounded, while not an American ship was badly hurt and not an American sailor was killed. There had hardly been so one-sided a battle since the world began.
There, I have, as I promised, told you in few words the story of the war. Soon after a treaty of peace was signed and all was at an end. The brave Dewey was made an admiral and was greatly honored by the American people.
If you should ask me what we gained from the war, I would answer that we gained in the first place what the war was fought for, the freedom of Cuba from the cruel rule of Spain. But we did not come out of it without something for ourselves. We obtained the fertile island of Porto Rico in the West Indies and the large group of the Philippine Islands, near the coast of Asia. These last named came as the prize of Dewey's victory, but I am sorry to say that there was a war with the people themselves before the United States got possession. During the war with Spain we obtained another fine group of islands, that known as Hawaii, in the Pacific Ocean. You can see from this that our country made a wide spread over the seas at the end of the nineteenth century. The winning of all these islands was an event of the greatest importance to the United States. It gave this country a broad foothold on the seas and a new outlook over the earth. Some of the proud nations of Europe had looked on this country as an American power only, with no voice in world affairs. But when Uncle Sam set his left foot on the Hawaiian Islands, in the Central Pacific, and his right foot on the Philippine Islands, near the coast of Asia, these powers of Europe opened their eyes and began to get new ideas about the great republic of the West. It was plain that the United States had become a world power, andthat when the game of empire was to be played the western giant must be asked to take a hand.
This was seen soon after, when China began to murder missionaries and try to drive all white people from its soil. For the first time in history the United States joined hands with Europe in an Old World quarrel, and it was made evident that the world could not be cut up and divided among the powers without asking permission from Uncle Sam. But fortunately Uncle Sam wants to keep out of war.
And now we are near the end of our long journey. We have traveled together for more than four hundred years, from the time of Columbus to the present day, looking at the interesting facts of our country's history, and following its growth from a tiny seed planted in the wilderness to a giant tree whose branches are beginning to overshadow the earth. We have read about what our fathers did in the times that are no more. We have learned something of what has been taking place during our own lives. There is a new history before us in which we shall live and act and of which our own doings will form part. A new century, the twentieth, has opened before us, and it only remains to tell what our country has done in the few years that have passed of this century.
I THINK it very likely that all, or nearly all, who read this book were born before the new century—the one we call the twentieth—began. It is a young century still. Yet there has been time enough for many things to take place in the country we call our own. Some of these you may remember. Others many of you were too young to know much about. So it is my purpose here to bring the story of our country up to the present time.
Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus.Roosevelt Surprised by a Giant Hippopotamus.
I have not said much about our Presidents, but there was a President elected in the first year of the twentieth century of whom I must speak, since his election led to a dreadful event. In the following year (1901) a beautiful exhibition was held at Buffalo, New York. It was called the Pan American Exhibition, and was intended to show what the nations of America had done in the century just closed.
I shall say little about the splendid electrical display, the fountains with their colored lights, the shining cascades, the glittering domes and pinnacles,the caverns and grottoes, and all the other brilliant things to be seen, for I have to speak of something much less pleasant, the dark deed of murder and treachery which took place at this exhibition.
President McKinley came to Buffalo early in September to see the fine display and let the people see him, and on the 6th he stood with smiling face while many hundreds of visitors passed by and shook hands with him. In the midst of all this there came a loud, sharp sound. A pistol had been fired. The President staggered back, with pallid face. Men shouted; women screamed; a crowd rushed towards the spot; the man who held the pistol was flung to the floor and hundreds surged forward in fury. "He has shot our President! Kill him! Kill him!" they cried. The guards had a hard fight to keep the murderer from being torn to pieces by the furious throng.
The man who had shot the President belonged to a society called Anarchists, who hate all rulers and think it their duty to kill all kings and presidents. Poor, miserable wretch! he suffered the death he deserved. But his shot had reached its mark, and after a week of fear and hope, President McKinley died. He was mourned by all the people as if each of them had lost a member of his or her own family.
You probably know that when a President diesthe Vice-President takes his place. McKinley's Vice-President was a capable man named Theodore Roosevelt. He was very fond of tramping through the wilds and of hunting wild beasts. At the time we speak of, when the news of the death of President McKinley was sent abroad, Vice-President Roosevelt was off on a long tramp through the Adirondack Mountains of New York, perhaps hoping to shoot a deer, or possibly a bear.
When the news came, no one knew where he was, and dozens of the mountain-climbers were sent out to find him. As they spread out and pushed forward, the crack of rifles could be heard on all sides and megaphones were used to send their voices far through the mountain defiles. But hour after hour passed and the shades of evening were at hand, and still no answer came; no sign of Roosevelt and his party could be traced. Finally, when they were near the high top of Mount Marcy, answering shots and shouts were heard, and soon the hunting party came in sight.
When Mr. Roosevelt was told the news they brought—that the President was at the point of death—he could hardly believe it; for the last news had said that he was likely to get well. He knew now that he must get to Buffalo as soon as he could, so that the country should not be without a President, and he started back for the clubhousefrom which he had set out at a pace that kept the others busy to keep up with him.
Night had fallen when he reached the clubhouse, but there was to be no sleep for him that night. A stagecoach, drawn by powerful horses, waited his coming, and in very few minutes he was inside it, the coachman had drawn his reins and cracked his whip, and away went the horses, plunging into the darkness of the woods that overhung the road.
That was one of the great rides in our history. You would have said so if you had been there to see. There were thirty-five miles to be made before the nearest railroad station could be reached. The road was rough and muddy, for a very heavy thunderstorm had fallen that day. Darkness overhung the way, made more gloomy by the thick foliage of the trees. Here and there they stopped for a few minutes to change horses, and then plunged on at full speed again. What thoughts were in the mind of the solitary passenger whom fate was about to make President of the great United States, during that dark and dismal night, no one can tell. Fortune had built for him a mighty career and he was hastening to take up the reins of government, soon to be dropped by the man chosen to hold them.
Alden's Lane was reached at 3:15 in the morningand the horses were again changed. The road now before them was the worst of all, for it was very narrow in places and had deep ravines on either side, while heavy forest timber shut it in. But the man who handled the horses knew his road and felt how great a duty had been placed in his hands, and at 5:22 that morning, when the light of dawn was showing in the east, the coach dashed up to the railroad station at North Creek. Here a special train, the locomotive puffing out steam, lay waiting for its distinguished passenger.
News of greater weight now greeted thetraveler. He was told that the President was dead. He had passed away at Buffalo three hours before. The man who landed as Vice-President on that solitary platform, was now President of the United States. Only the oath of office was needed to make him such.
Disturbed in mind by the thrilling news, the traveler of the night stepped quickly into the car that waited for him, and the engine darted away through the dawn of the new day. Speed, speed, speed, was the thought in the mind of the engineer, and over the track dashed the iron horse and its single car, often at a rate of more than a mile a minute. Hour after hour passed by as they rushed across the state. At 1:40 in the afternoon the train came rattling into Buffalo, and its passenger leaped to the platform and made all hasteto the house of Ainsley Wilcox, one of his special friends. There, that afternoon, he was sworn into office as President of the United States, and the scene we have described came to an end, one of the most dramatic among those in our country's history. Never before had a man been sought in the depths of a mountain wilderness and ridden through rain and gloom a whole night long, to be told at the end that he had become the ruler of one of the greatest nations on the earth!
I have told you that Theodore Roosevelt was fond of hunting. While he was President he had to leave the wild animals alone, but he did another kind of hunting, which was to hunt for dishonesty and fraud among the great business concerns of the country. He said that every man ought to have an equal chance to make a living, and he had laws passed to help in this.
This kind of hunting made him very popular among the people, which was shown by his being elected President by a large majority when the time came for the next Presidential election. He also won much fame by helping to put an end to the dreadful war between Russia and Japan, and men everywhere began to speak of him as the greatest of living rulers.
While Mr. Roosevelt was President several things took place which are worth speaking about. One was the building of the Panama canal toconnect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is not yet finished, but when it is done it will be the greatest canal on the earth. A second thing was the splendid World's Fair held at St. Louis in 1904, in memory of the purchase from France of the great Louisiana country a century before. Two years later the large city of San Francisco was destroyed by earthquake and fire, with great loss of life and property.
One thing more must be spoken of, for with this President Roosevelt had much to do. This was to have great dams built on the mountain streams of the West, so as to bring water to millions of acres of barren lands and make them rich and fertile. Also, to save the forests, nearly 200,000,000 acres of forest land were set aside as the property of the nation and kept from the axes of the woodcutters.
The time for another Presidential election came In 1908, but Mr. Roosevelt would not run for the office again. I fancy he was tired of it and wanted to do some real hunting, for he soon set out for Africa, the land of the largest and fiercest animals on the earth. Here is the elephant, the rhinoceros, the lion, the wild buffalo and other savage beasts, and he spent a year in killing these animals and in keeping them from killing him. I have no doubt you would like to read of the exciting time he had in this great hunting trip, but I must stop here and leave it untold, for it is no part of the Story of Our Country.