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ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE WORLDS HISTORY 
 
 THE CHILD'S 
 
 Story ^Greatest Century 
 
 A MARVELOUS RECORD OF THE WORLD'S PROGRESS 
 
 T he Wonderful Inventions in Steam and Electricity which 
 have Changed all Methods of Manufacture and Modes of Life 
 and Travel— The Great Discoveries of Science which have 
 Revolutionized the World— The Exploration and Develop, 
 ment of New Lands and Territory— The Increase in Popu^ 
 lation and Wealth— Great Wars of Europe and America 
 with their Napoleon, Nelson, Wellington, Grant, Lee, Farragut, 
 and Other Heroes of Land and Sea— Told in Easy Language 
 and Charming Way— All Stranger than Fiction and far more 
 Fascinating, 
 
 By CHARLES MORRIS, LL.D. 
 
 Author of "The Greater Republic," "Famous Hen and Great Events of the 19th Century. 
 "The Child's History of the United States," etc., etc. 
 
 Embellished with Lithograph Color Plates and Thirty-^two 
 
 Full Page Haif=Tone Engravings Illustrating 
 
 the Greatest Events of the Century 
 
THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 CONGRESS, 
 Two Ctvita Received 
 
 OCT. It 1901 
 
 COPVRIQHT ENTRY 
 
 CLASS '^XXa No, 
 
 COPY a. 
 
 .^■^^.^•§g,g,g;g;gf;g;gig;^-^ 
 
 ^P^:#.-§^.-§i§:§^^.-§:-§S ^^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1901, bv 
 
 AV. E. SCULJL,, 
 in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 lOUtrs R£l»Kl-i 
 
 T 
 
 
 >v\Sn^ 
 
A Few Words with My Young Friends 
 
 F any of my young friends are newspaper readers, 
 they must have seen a great deal said in the 
 beginning of the year 1900 about the Nineteenth 
 Century. Thus there was quite a dispute about 
 when it began and when it ended. Some said it 
 began with the year 1800 and ended with the year 1899. 
 Others said it began January i, 1801, and ended at the close 
 of December, 1 900. Nearly everybody thought the last dates 
 to be the right ones, for they said that the first century began 
 on the first day of the year i, the second century on the first 
 day of the year 10 1, and all other centuries in the same way, 
 till the nineteenth century, which began with the year 1801. 
 
 I do not think we need trouble ourselves much about 
 this. I am not writing this book to tell when the nineteenth 
 century be an and ended, but what it was like and what great 
 things took place in it. There have been many 
 important centuries since the world began, but century 
 most men say that the nineteenth century was 
 the most important of them all. It did more for man and 
 for civilization than any two centuries that had gone before it. 
 No one can know what history means, or what the 
 progress of the world has been, unless he knows a great deal 
 about this wonderful century. It has been the century of 
 invention. When it began men did the most of their work 
 with their hands ; now they do the most of it with machines. 
 It has been the century of science. When it began men knew 
 very little about the great forces and forms of the universe ; 
 
A FEW WORDS WITH MY YOUNG FRIENDS 
 
 now they know a great deal about electricity and light and 
 heat and a hundred other things. It has been the century of 
 progress in human liberty. The slaves of a hundred years 
 ago are free men to-day, and the people of the nations have 
 far more liberty than they had in the past ages. 
 
 These are some of the things we owe to the nineteenth 
 century. They are not the whole of them. It has been a 
 century crowded with marvels, full of great events and won- 
 derful discoveries. It has had its triumphs of war and its 
 greater triumphs of peace ; its great warriors and its greater 
 statesmen ; its great doers and its greater thinkers. The past 
 centuries were centuries of action more than of thought ; this 
 has been a century alike of thought and of action. Man's 
 hands have been busy, but his brain has been busier, and the 
 triumphs of the nineteenth century are the triumphs of the mind. 
 
 I hope the readers of this little book understand what I 
 have just said. If any part of it is not clear to them they 
 must read on to the end to learn what it all means. This 
 book is the story of the lives and acts of the people now liv- 
 ing on the earth and of their fathers and grand- 
 ManJeis*^** fathers. It should be of interest to all of us 
 on that account. The story of the nineteenth 
 century is a wonderful one in every way. There is nothing 
 else so wonderful in the history of the world. None of the 
 tales of adventure you may have read are of more interest 
 than the facts of this great century, and I am sure you will 
 agree with me when you have read this book through. 
 
 That is all I have to say here. One cannot say every- 
 thing in a preface. And none of you, when you are invited 
 to a good dinner, care much to be told what is on the table. 
 You would rather find out for yourselves. So with these few 
 words I throw open the doors of the dining hall, and let you in 
 to the feast of good things which has been prepared for you. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 A FEW WORDS WITH OUR YOUNG READERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 A Railroad Ride Through the Century 
 
 All Aboard ! — From 1800 to 1900 — A Look Around in 1800 — What the World 
 Looked Like — How People Lived — The Strange World of our Grand- 
 fathers — The Growth of the World During the Century 17 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The United States from a Car Window 
 
 America from 1600 to 1800 — How We Bought Louisiana — Lewis and Clark 
 Go West — The War of 181 2 — National Progress — Slavery and War — 
 The Wealth of Alaska 25 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 A Bird's Eye View of the Old World 
 
 Europe in the Nineteenth Century — The Wars of Napoleon — The Blessings 
 of Peace — Travel in Africa — England and Russia in Asia — Civilization 
 in Japan — The Philippine Islands — The March of Progress 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Napoleon, the Great Conqueror 
 
 What Makes Men Great — Napoleon's Early Days — Napoleon Crosses the 
 Alps — Napoleon Crowned Emperor — The Grand Army in Russia — 
 Napoleon in Exile — The Return from Elba — The Battle of Waterloo . . 40 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Nelson, the Sailor, and Wellington, the Soldier 
 
 The British Islands — Horatio Nelson — The Battle of the Nile — Victory and 
 Death at Trafalgar — Wellington in Spain and Portugal — The Hundred 
 Days — Waterloo and the Fall of Napoleon 49 
 
X TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI ''^'^^ 
 
 The Champion of Right and the Tribune of the 
 
 People 
 
 The Victories of Peace — Gladstone's First Great Speech — Naples and Bul- 
 garia — Gladstone and Disraeli — Home Rule in Ireland — Gladstone as 
 Prime Minister — John Bright, the People's Tribune 57 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Garibaldi, the Hero of Italy 
 
 The Peninsula of Italy — The Italian Patriots-^Garibaldi's Wanderings — He 
 Fights for Rome — Visits the United States — The War with the Austrians 
 — Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy — Rome and Defeat — Rome and 
 Naples 65 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Russia, the Colossus of the East 
 
 The Extent of Russia — Life in Russia — The Colossus of the East — The 
 Country of the Turks — Wars of Russia and Turkey — Sebastopol Taken 
 The Bulgarian Horror — The Nations Hungry for China 73 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Louis Napoleon and His Empire 
 
 Napoleon the Eittle — France After Waterloo — Louis Philippe — The Revolt of 
 1 848 — Louis Napoleon in France — The New Emperor — Soldiers Sent to 
 Rome — The War with Austria — The French in Mexico 79 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 England and Her Colonies 
 
 An English Boast— The Colony of Canada — Progress of Australia— India 
 Conquered— The Terrible Retreat from Cabul— The Indian Mutiny — • 
 Partition of Africa — The Struggle in Egypt • 88 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 How Bismarck Made an Empire 
 
 King William and Count Bismarck — Prussia Grows Powerful — Louis Napo- 
 leon's Blunders—" On to Berlin "—The Victories of the Germans- 
 Surrender of Metz and Paris— The Crowning of William 95 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER XII J'AOB 
 
 Bolivar, the Liberator, and Touissant, the Brave 
 
 Spain and Her Colonies — Simon Bolivar — An Assassin Foiled — Crossing the 
 Andes — Bolivar's Victories — The Reward of the Liberator — The Out- 
 break in Haj'ti — A Negro Conqueror and Ruler — Treachery of Napoleon . 105 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Development of the United States 
 
 Conditions in 1800 — Settling a Great Territory — Wars with England and 
 Mexico — The City of Mexico — The Triumphs of Peace — Growth of Trade 
 and Industry — Steamboats and Railroads — The Rule of the People . . 112 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Indians and the Negroes 
 
 A New Variety of People — Black and Red Men — The Indians Fight for Their 
 Homes — Beyond the Mississippi — Present State of the Indians — The 
 Blacks in America — The Institution of Slavery — The Abolitionists . . 120 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and the Freedom of the Slave 
 
 The Life of a Poor Boy — From Rail-splitting to Congress — The Debate with 
 Douglas — The Question of Slavery — Lincoln is Made President — The 
 Slaves Set Free — An Assassin's Cruel Deed 127 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Great Civil War in America 
 
 The North and South in Arms — Vicksburg and Gettysburg — Grant Com- 
 mander-in-Chief^Sherman's March to Atlanta — Crossing Georgia — The 
 Siege of Petersburg — Thomas at Nashville — Lee's Retreat and Surrender 133 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The Battle of the Ironclads and the Birth of the 
 
 New Navy 
 
 Two Strange Vessels — The Monitor and the Merriniac — Farragut at New 
 Orleans and Mobile — The Sinking of the Albemarle — The Kearsarge 
 and the Aladaf7ia — Steelclad Fighters — The World's New Navies . . . 139 
 
xii TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII p^°« 
 
 How Japan and China Woke Out of Their Long Sleep 
 
 The Realm of Yellow Faces — The Opening of Japan — The Mikado m Power 
 The Pride of China — Opening of the Ports — The Capture of Pekin — 
 The War with Japan — The Question of Partition — The Boxers' War . 145 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 South Africa and the Boer War 
 
 The Dark Continent — Exploration and Partition — The Boers and the Eng- 
 lish — Troubles of the Transvaal — Diamonds and Gold — A Declaration 
 of War — How the Boers Fought — Fate of the Boer Republic 153 
 
 CHAATER XX 
 
 Livingstone and Stanley, the Great African 
 
 Travelers 
 
 Travel in Africa — Mungo Park and James Bruce — Livingstone, the Mission- 
 ary — Lost to Sight — Stanley to the Rescue — Stanley's Great Journey 
 Down the Congo — Emin Pasha and His Peril 160 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Discoveries in the Sea of Ice 
 
 The Northwest Passage and the Pole — Explorers of the Icy Seas — Sir John 
 Franklin and His Loss — Greeley and His Misfortunes — Nansen and His 
 Adventures — Peary in Greenland — His Break for the Pole 168 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 The Treasures of the Hills 
 
 The Wealth of the Rocks — The California Gold Placers — Australia and South 
 Africa — The Gold of Alaska — The Bonanza Silver Mines — The Diamonds 
 of Africa — Vast Coal Deposits — Coal Oil Discoveries — Copper Mines . . 175 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The Marvels of Machinery and the Great Inventors 
 
 Old and New Work in the Fields— The Tools of Our Grandfathers— The Era 
 of Invention — Wonderful Progress in Machinery — Fulton and the Steam- 
 boat — Howe and the Sewing Machine — Goodyear and Rubber .... 181 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV ^agr 
 
 Morse and Edison, and the Marvels o'f Electricity 
 
 The Source of the Lightning — From Franklin to Morse — The Discovery of 
 the Telegraph — Field and the Ocean Cable — Bell and the Telephone — 
 The Electric Eight — Edison and His Discoveries 1 88 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 The Wonders of Science 
 
 Science and Invention — What Makes Heat — Eight and Its Wonders — The 
 Marvelous X-Ray — The Sun and the Stars — Geology and its Marvels — 
 Plants and Animals — Man , Ancient and Modern — The Study of the Mind . 1 96 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 The Man Behind the Machine 
 
 Man the Worker — Old and New Systems of Industry — The Trades Union and 
 the Strike — Combination of Labor and Capital — Profit Sharing and 
 Co-operation — Socialism — The Status of the Laborer 203 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 The Growth of Commerce and Industry 
 
 Commerce in 1800 — Activity in England — Growth of Commerce in America 
 and Germany — Industry in England, France and Germany — Activity of 
 American Industry — Vast Productive Power — New Markets ..... 211 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 The World of our Own Time 
 
 Contrast of 1800 with 1900 — Present Condition of the World — Modern Art 
 Industry and Organization — Progress of Education — The Great Writers 
 of the Century — Libraries and Art Galleries — Charity and Benevolence . 219 
 
THE THOUGHTFUL BOY WHO INVENTED THE STEAM ENGINE 
 
 fames Watt the inventor of the first successful steam engine died in i8ig. His discovery made possible the 
 
 railroads, steamships and our most powerful machinery. The wonderful 19th Century owes more, 
 
 perhaps, to this thoughtful boy than to any other inventor. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 A Railroad Ride through the Century 
 
 ILL ABOARD!" Crowd in, boys and girls, all 
 of you. Bring your field glasses and cameras, 
 for there is much to be seen and many pictures 
 which you will like to take. And don't forget 
 your lunch boxes, lest you should grow hungry 
 on the road. "All aboard ! Go ahead !" 
 
 It is a strange journey we are going to take. Our route 
 lies not through space, but through time. Not over land and 
 water, but backward over the years. Not to where your 
 friends live in some distant city or state, but to where your 
 grandfathers lived in a distant time. We are 
 going back at lightning speed for a hundred ^ "" o^d 
 years ; then we will come on by accommoda- 
 tion train to the present time, stopping at all the important 
 stations for a long look around. But no one must leave the 
 train until the engine comes puffing in to the station 1900, at 
 the end of the journey. 
 
 It is a trip from 1800 to 1900 that I wish you to take, 
 and you must try to see all that is worth seeing on the road. 
 Here you will go through great cities and there over broad 
 plains. Here you will see men working, and there you will 
 see men fighting. Here you will see the first locomotive and 
 telegraph, and there you will see flags flying and hear the 
 trumpet and drum. It is a wonderful journey that lies before 
 you, with much to see and much to think about "All 
 aboard ! Go ahead ! " 
 
 17 
 
1 8 A RAILROAD RIDE THROUGH THE CENTURY 
 
 Here we are at station 1800. Jump out briskly. Tell the 
 engineer to wait for orders. Before we get on the cars to 
 start back I want you to take a good look around this station. 
 You all know something about what the year 1900 is like, and 
 I want you to know what the world looked like a hundred 
 years before, the\world your grandfathers were born into. 
 
 I wish we h^d a map of the world a century old ; it 
 would be of use just now. Have you ever seen such a map 
 of the United States ? It was a pretty big country then, but it 
 has grown from a child into a man since that time. It stopped 
 short at the Mississippi River, and all the vast country west 
 of this river belonged to Spain. It did not 
 states in 1800 ^vcn go as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, for 
 Spain owned Florida and a strip of land many 
 miles wide along the Gulf. So our forefathers were pretty 
 well crowded in, you see. They could not even go down to 
 the mouth of the Mississippi without passing through a 
 foreign country, for the lower channel of this great river 
 belonged to Spain. 
 
 You can see we did not have a very large country then 
 alongside of the United States of to-day, spreading out, as it 
 does, from ocean to ocean across the continent. But, for all 
 that, it was too large for the people in it. Great part of it 
 was wild forest, in which only wild beasts and savage Indians 
 lived. Most of our people had their homes in the states 
 along the Atlantic coast, and all their cities lay close to the 
 ocean side. These were not much of cities. We would call 
 most of them towns to-day. When w^e look at such great 
 cities as New York and Philadelphia, each with much more 
 than a million people, and look back at what they were then, 
 we seem to see a mere handful of people brought together. 
 
 Would you have liked to live in those cities ? I do 
 not think you would. George Washington and Benjamin 
 
A RAILROAD RIDE THROUGH THE CENTURY 19 
 
 Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and other great men Hved in 
 them and thought them very fine, but if they had ever lived 
 in the way people live to-day they might have changed their 
 minds. Most of the streets at that time were like country 
 roads, dusty in summer and muddy in winter. Our smooth 
 asphalt and brick pavements had not been thought of then. 
 Yet I ought to go back a little farther, for the great age 
 of invention began in the eighteenth century. It was then we 
 got the steam-engine, which I may call the father of invention, 
 for if it had not been for this, much of the machinery we now 
 have would be of no use. Some of our machines, such as 
 the bicycle and the sewing-machine are worked 
 by foot-power ; some of them, like the mowing- , ^ ather of 
 
 •' ^ . . ^ Invention 
 
 and reaping machines, are worked by horse- 
 power ; but the large and swift machines are worked by 
 steam-power ; so we would be very badly off indeed without 
 the steam-engine. Some day the electric-engine may take its 
 place, but that day has not come yet. 
 
 Other important machines were invented in the eigh- 
 teenth century. These were machines for spinning and 
 weaving, the cotton-gin, the first steamboat, and various 
 others. But for all that the nineteenth century has been 
 much the greatest century for invention the world has ever 
 known. 
 
 I mean to tell you in a later chapter something about our 
 inventors. I cannot tell you much ; there were too many of 
 them ; their inventions run far up into the thousands, though 
 you may not think it. And some of the smallest of these took 
 as nmch brain work to make as some of the largest. It took 
 as much hard thought to invent a machine to make a pin as to 
 produce one that would make a great steel engine-shaft. So 
 I shall not trouble myself much about big or little in telling 
 you about a few of our leading inventors. 
 
20 A RAILROAD RIDE THROUGH THE CENTURY 
 
 At night the streets were Ht up by oil lamps, and often 
 not lit up at all. No one dreamed of gas or electric lights. 
 After dark people who had to go out stumbled about the best 
 they could, and many of them carried lanterns with tallow 
 candles in them. 
 
 It was as bad inside as outside. In most houses there 
 was only one room well heated — the kitchen, with its great 
 fireplace and blazing logs. The bedrooms in winter were as 
 cold as Greenland. Father and mother and the little ones 
 went shivering to bed, with only a tallow candle to light 
 them, and got up shivering in the morning. 
 ^ '^T^ Often they had to break the ice in the basin to 
 
 Comforts -^ 
 
 wash their faces. They had very few of the 
 comforts we have to-day. Not one floor in a hundred had a 
 carpet ; furniture was rude and plain ; pictures and books 
 were few and poor ; a hundred little comforts which we have 
 were not thought of ; not as much as a match was to be had : 
 you can thank your lucky stars that you live to-day instead 
 of living then. 
 
 I might say a great deal more about the United States 
 in those days, but we must leave that country and look at the 
 rest of the world. If any of you had lived a hundred years 
 ago, and gone up to a great height in a balloon, and looked 
 down on the world spread out below you like a vast map, you 
 would have seen life and activity almost everywhere. But 
 the maps which men had in those days did not show much 
 of this, for very little was then known of the world. 
 
 Civilized people knew a good deal about Europe and 
 something about America, but they did not know much about 
 the rest of the earth. If you had looked on a map of Africa 
 at that time you would have seen a narrow strip around the 
 coast with names and places, and a broad region inside quite 
 bare of names. Nothing was known about this great interior. 
 
A RAILROAD RIDE THROUGH THE CENTURY 21 
 
 Since then travelers have gone all over Africa, and the maps 
 of it we have to-day are full of names of mountains, lakes, 
 rivers, countries and tribes, none of which were known a cen- 
 tury ago. It is almost as if we had discovered a new world. 
 
 The map of Asia had not much more to show. A good 
 deal was known about India, Persia, and Arabia, but most of 
 the continent seemed a broad, blank space. Hardly anything 
 was known about China and less about Japan 
 — though we know a great deal about those l^^""^ l^^^ 
 countries to-day — and the centre and north of 
 Asia might as well have been in the moon. The great island 
 of Australia was not much better known, and many of the 
 islands of the Pacific Ocean had never been seen. 
 
 If you had lived in 1800 and had seen a map of the 
 world as it was known then, I am afraid you would have 
 stared at it and asked what all those blank places meant, and 
 if they were all great deserts. You might have asked who 
 lived in Africa, and what countries there were in Asia, and 
 what was to be seen in Australia. Nobody could have 
 answered you. But to-day you could be told nearly all 
 about those countries. This is one of the most wonderful 
 things that has been done in the nineteenth century. The 
 world has been discovered. For the first time in the history 
 of man we are able to make a map of nearly the whole earth. 
 I think that is a great deal to say, for it has been the work of 
 hundreds of brave travelers, who went among savage peoples 
 at the risk of their lives. Many of them never came back 
 again. Some were killed and some starved to death ; some 
 perished of cold in the Arctic ice and some of heat on the 
 equator. When you are thinking of the courage of brave 
 soldiers, just think of these men, who were in their way the 
 bravest of soldiers, and gave their lives for the good of 
 mankind. 
 
22 A RAILROAD RIDE THROUGH THE CENTURY 
 
 Is that the locomotive I hear whistling ? Some one tell 
 the engineer to hold on. We are not ready to start yet. 
 There is a good deal still to be seen around the station 1800, 
 and we must make our own time-table for this trip. 
 
 Take hold of hands, all of you. Now let us make a 
 lightning leap to yonder mountain-top. We are traveling 
 through time, you know, and there is no lead in our feet to 
 hold us down. Here we are. Look down on the country 
 spread before you, the country of 1800, and let me know 
 what you see. 
 
 " There are no railroads," some one says. "I cannot 
 
 see an iron rail nor a locomotive anywhere." I fancy you 
 
 cannot. You are away back before the time of railroads and 
 
 locomotives. Look at the lumbering coach, drawn by four 
 
 or more sturdy horses, in the highroad yonder, 
 
 ayemga ^\\\i the driver ci-ackine: his whip proudly in 
 
 Century Ago o r r J 
 
 the air. Now he sounds his horses, and now 
 the coach stops before a wayside inn, with a creaking sign at 
 the top of a high post, and out leap the half dozen or whole 
 dozen of travelers. That inn was the station of the year 1800. 
 
 " But are these all the travelers ? " you ask. 
 
 Yes, indeed ; you see the whole of them. When we 
 stand in a modern railway station, with its hundreds of peo- 
 ple coming and going, hour by hour, it is hard to believe that 
 one or two stage coaches, with a dozen or two of passengers, 
 made up the daily travel of a century ago. But such is the 
 case. Men who had to go a hundred miles from home made 
 their wills and bade good-bye to their families and friends, for 
 they were afraid they would never see them again. 
 
 And on that river, where you would now see a dozen 
 steamboats and a crowd of puffing tugboats, you can see, from 
 our present outlook, only a few vessels moved by sails. The 
 steamboat was yet to come. It is true that a little, awkward 
 
A RAILROAD RIDE THROUGH THE CENTURY 23 
 
 sort of boat was run by steam on the Delaware River before 
 1800, but it was not* the kind of craft that people cared to 
 travel in, and it soon went out of sight again. 
 
 Look farther and see what else is in view. Far and wide 
 stretch before you great forests, broken here and there by set- 
 tlements, where farmers are busy at work in their fields. But 
 just see the tools they are using ! There goes a row of 
 brawny men, with long curved scythes, cutting down the tall 
 grass of the fields. And yonder are other men, with short 
 curved blades, called sickles, gathering and clipping off the 
 wheat stalks as they go. And in the barns are other stal- 
 wart fellows, with long linked sticks, which they call flails, 
 beatinof the straw to knock out the g^rains of 
 wheat or oats. In some places we may see cattle and"pres'en** 
 driven over the straw to tread out the grain. 
 
 How different is all this from farm work nowadays ! 
 Why, you might go to-day almost from end to end of this 
 country and not see a scythe, a wheat sickle, or a flail. Instead, 
 you would see horses drawing light machines through the 
 fields, which mow down the grass and cut and bind the wheat 
 stalks, and plant the seed, and do almost everything else 
 needed. And in the barn you would see threshing machines 
 which make short work of separating the grain from the straw. 
 
 The nineteenth century has been the century of machines. 
 In 1800 nearly all the work of the farm was done by hand. 
 In 1900 it was nearly all done by machines, and one man 
 could do as much as ten men in the past. And so it was 
 with nearly all other kinds of work. Looking from your 
 mountain-top you will see none of the great factories, filled with 
 rattling machinery, in which the work of the world is now 
 done. In 1800 very much of this work was done at home, 
 with small, simple tools and machines, and the age of the 
 factory was just coming on. The steam-engine had lately 
 
24 A RAILROAD RIDE THROUGH THE CENTURY 
 
 been invented, but it was like a baby still. Many years would 
 be needed for it to grow into a giant. 
 
 Look aeain. What else has our mountain outlook to 
 show ? One thing you may see is that people had to work 
 very hard in 1800. Hand work is hard work; machine work 
 is easy work. Then every one worked till the sun sank out 
 of sight, and went to bed tired enough. Most of our people 
 to-day hardly know what hard work is. 
 
 There was not much time for amusements. The very 
 play was work. In the houses there were spinning and sew- 
 ing, and quilting parties ; in the barns there were husking 
 frolics ; after a wedding the neighbors came to 
 ome lea j^^j^ ^^ ^j^^ house-raising ; men went hunting 
 
 and fishing for food more than for sport. They 
 called all this amusement, but it was work as well. They 
 could not afford to waste time in play. Yet I have no doubt 
 they enjoyed it all. They were hearty, honest folks, who did 
 not have many holidays, but got all the fun they could out of 
 what they had. 
 
 Ha ! there sounds the whistle again ! Let us skip back 
 to the station. If we stop to see more the train may start 
 without us. Hurry up, little and big, boys and girls ! Jump 
 on the cars! There screams the whistle with its "Toot! 
 Too-00-oot ! Toot !" There sounds the engine bell, with its 
 '' Clang ! Cling ! Clang ! " " All aboard ! Go ahead ! " 
 
NAPOLEON CROSSING THE ALPS 
 
 
 , 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 America from a Car Window. 
 
 WAY we go, rattling down the century. A queer 
 sort of railroad ride, isn't it? If you look from 
 the car windows you will not see fields and 
 woods and towns sweeping past, as we do when 
 we travel through the country ; but you will see 
 events taking place ; you will see the years pass before you 
 like a panorama ; you will see forests falling, and cities grow- 
 ing, and men marching and working, and all those things 
 going on which make up the history of a century. 
 
 First, there spreads before us the republic of the west, the 
 United States. Let us take our pioneer trip through that fresh 
 young land. If you look back to the year 1600 you will see 
 there only a wilderness, the home of the wild beast and the 
 savage Indian. Go on to 1700 and you behold a few settle- 
 ments of white men near the ocean shores, but 
 all the vast back country is a wilderness still. 
 Now onward to 1800. See what a change! 
 The settlements have grown and spread until there are more 
 than five million white men in the land, and a new nation 
 has arisen, a nation without a king or a duke, a lord or a 
 baron, and in which the only nobles are the people themselves. 
 Leap now to 1900, and we find this young nation to be one 
 of the greatest and strongest and richest and noblest on the 
 face of the earth. 
 
 Onward we fly down the years, but not to the century's 
 end ; we are brought to a halt by a great event in the history 
 
 From 1600 
 to 1900 
 
 25 
 
26 AMERICA I ROM A CAR WINDOW 
 
 of the new-born nation. In 1800 it went west to the Missis- 
 sippi River, and there it stopped. Any of your forefathers 
 who crossed that stream found himself in a foreign land, for 
 all the vast country on the other side belonged to Spain. 
 
 That country had once belonged to France, whose people 
 called it Louisiana, after their king, Louis XIV. Then it was 
 given to Spain, and in 1801 Spain gave it back to France. It 
 was like a bad penny, passing from hand to hand. And now 
 an important event took place which w^e must stop to observe 
 before we rattle on. 
 
 The Americans of that time did not want this vast wil- 
 derness of Louisiana. They had more land already than they 
 knew what to do with. What they did want was the city of 
 New Orleans. They wished their vessels to go down the 
 Mississippi to the sea without sailing through 
 The Louisiana ^^^^ ^^j^ , ^^^ soldicrs of Spain or France, and 
 
 Purchase -^ ^ ^ 
 
 which might be closed against them at any time. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, who was then the emperor of 
 France, was asked to sell New Orleans to the United States. 
 He was then at war with England and other countries, and 
 did not care a fig for all the wild land beyond the seas. What 
 he wanted was money to buy food and arms for his soldiers. 
 So he offered to sell, not only New Orleans, but the whole 
 vast country of Louisiana, to the United States for fifteen 
 million dollars. Thomas Jefferson was then President. He 
 agreed to buy that great region, and by a stroke of the pen 
 it became part of the United States. 
 
 Look out from your car windows on the year 1803, and 
 see what it has to show. You behold the United States 
 sweeping across the Mississippi River and away west to the 
 Rocky Mountains, and growing in a moment to more than 
 double its old size. It is like some of the stories you may 
 have read of a man planting a twig at night and finding a tree 
 
AMERICA FROM A CAR WINDOW 27 
 
 in the morning. But if you look westward from the station 
 1803 over this new territory I fear you will see nothing but 
 mist and fog. You know that it has its tribes of Indians, its 
 strange animals, its mighty mountains, its wonders of nature, 
 but you see them only like dim ghosts of things. President 
 Jefferson had made a leap in the dark. He did not know 
 what he had bought. So he sent out two daring men, Cap- 
 tains Lewis and Clark, to travel as far west as they could and 
 come back and tell him what they had seen. 
 
 These bold men plunged into that unknown land as we 
 might plunge into a deep cloud. For two years and a half 
 they were lost to sight ; no one knew if they were dead or 
 alive. Then they came back ag^ain, after e^oiner . . ,^. . 
 
 ^ . , if Lewis and Clark 
 
 over eight thousand miles of unknown land. 
 
 They had a wonderful story to tell of broad plains and 
 great rivers, of mighty mountains and grand forests, of 
 strange tribes of Indians and endless troops of buffaloes. They 
 had gone on till they reached the great Pacific Ocean, and 
 then turned back. People read the story of their adventures 
 as we read to-day an exciting tale of travel. Only then did 
 the people begin to see how rich and great a country 
 President Jefferson had bought. 
 
 We are off again now for the next station in our journey. 
 As we pass swiftly on we see rapid changes taking place around 
 us. People are going west in wagons with their families and 
 goods, or floating down the rivers in rude boats. The trees 
 are falling, the fields are being planted, new homes are rising, 
 towns are extending. The nation is growing. And soon we 
 see something new on the inland streams. The steamboat 
 appears and begins to beat the water with its broad paddles 
 and glides on without oars or sails. 
 
 The people are looking angrily out to sea. What do 
 they behold ? There is trouble on the ocean waves. British 
 
28 AMERICA FROM A CAR WINDOW 
 
 warships are stopping our merchant vessels and taking men 
 from them. Many deep-laden ships are seized and all their 
 cargoes taken. The Indians are being stirred up to war 
 by British scouts. All over the land you may see the 
 people talking in anger. They have had a war for liberty 
 with England, now they want a war for justice and right. We 
 hear them cry, " Free trade and Sailors' rights ! " 
 
 In a moment more we are in the year 1812. Drums are 
 beating and soldiers are marching. War has begun. Fight- 
 ing takes place, by land and sea. Now the British win battles 
 and now the Americans, but neither side is much the better 
 for the fighting, and not much glory is gained on shore. 
 
 Let us leave the land and look out to sea. Before our 
 
 eyes proud ships are meeting and great guns are roaring. 
 
 Nearly everywhere we see the old English flag going down 
 
 and the young American flag floating in vic- 
 
 Three Years of , a ■ ' \- ^^\ n j. • • ^.u 
 
 ^ ^ tory. America s little fleet is sweepmg the 
 
 seas, fighting the British ships wherever it finds 
 them, and bringing them in triumph to port, while the nations 
 of the world look on in wonder. We can almost hear them 
 hailing the young republic as mistress of the seas. 
 
 And so before our eyes the war goes on to its end and 
 both parties stop fighting. Three years of war — what has 
 been gained by it ? Not much ; but the Yankees have won 
 what they fought for. After that the British warships let their 
 merchant vessels and sailors alone. They have been taught 
 that America will not stand that sort of thing. 
 
 "All aboard again!" "Put on steam!" Away once 
 more we sweep through the years. And as we look out 
 around us a wonderful vision passes before our eyes. Peace 
 spreads its white wings over all the land. Men have quit 
 fighting and gone to working. Everywhere you can hear the 
 hammer and saw, the rattle of wheels and the clatter of hoofs. 
 
AMERICA FROM A CAR WINDO W 29 
 
 Everywhere you can see men busy at work in field and village. 
 From every port ships set out for foreign shores, deep laden 
 with goods. Other ships bring sturdy men from Europe to 
 make their homes in our land. Peace brings wealth, and day 
 by day the country grows richer. 
 
 As we look out, east and west, north and south, we see 
 new roads being made, new towns started, new cities built. 
 In New York state a wonderful work is being done. Hun- 
 dreds of men, with spades and other tools in their hands, 
 swarm over hill and dale, digging the earth and blasting the 
 rocks. The great Erie Canal is being dug. 
 Before many years pass we see it finished and ^ ^ ^^^ . 
 the water flowing in till it is filled. The long 
 lines of canal boats begin their journey, carrying the grain of 
 the West to the cities of the East. And through all the rest 
 of the century on they go, a steady stream of boats, bearing 
 grain to the East and goods to the West. 
 
 A few years more and another strange sight meets our 
 eyes. Here and there we notice a double line of iron rails, 
 running straight onward. And over them roar and rattle 
 smoking engines and trains of loaded cars. The railroad and 
 the locomotive are with us at last, the giant agents of modern 
 travel and modern industry. The world has moved slowly 
 till now ; now it will whirl on with tenfold speed. 
 
 All around us as we glide ahead on our silent journey 
 we see factories and workshops rising, steam coming from a 
 hundred high chimneys, mines opened and coal and iron being 
 drawn from the hearts of the hills, great fields of cotton and 
 wheat and corn growing ; while the people still march west, 
 driving the Indians before them, cutting down the forest as 
 they go, building new homes everywhere, founding young 
 cities in a hundred places. Never was there such a people as 
 we see around us ; never was there so much done in so short 
 
30 AMERICA FROM A CAR WINDOW 
 
 a time in any other part of the earth. But what is it we hear 
 from the years ahead ? Those are not the sounds of hammer 
 and spade, of factory whistle and engine bell. Those sounds 
 are the roll of drums, the crack of rifles, the boom of cannon. 
 War is again abroad in the land. But war itself brings us 
 prosperity, and our country flourishes in the smoke of the 
 battle-field. 
 
 There are wars with the Indians, and the red men are 
 forced to give up their hunting grounds to be turned into 
 farms by the whites. There is trouble with Spain, and that 
 country has to sell us the rich region of Florida. There is 
 war in Texas, and that great state is added to our Union. 
 There is war in Mexico, and the land of gold 
 *!, ^ r **^^ " and silver is added to the United States, the 
 
 the Country ' 
 
 rich regions of California and New Mexico. 
 
 One great tract of land comes to us without war, the 
 broad domain of Oregon. This ends the march of our coun- 
 try across the continent. It has spread from ocean to ocean, 
 and extends like a broad belt across the centre of the con- 
 tinent. 
 
 All this we see as we glide on and on in our swift and 
 silent journey. The country grows before our eyes. In 1800 
 it was a large country already, but in 1850 it was four times 
 as large, and no countries in the world, except Russia and 
 China, surpassed it in size. Was not that a wonderful growth 
 for a half century ? It was not settled, it is true ; that was 
 the work to be done in the next half century. 
 
 But the fighting is not at an end ; there is more of it 
 before us ; a terrible, frightful war which will add nothing to 
 the country, but which seems likely to tear it asunder and rob 
 it of its greatness and strength. 
 
 As we go on down the century we hear strange sounds 
 around us. There are fierce disputes in the halls of Congress ; 
 
AMERICA FROM A CAR WINDOW 31 
 
 there is fighting in some of the states ; blood is shed, men are 
 full of anger, hot passions are rising everywhere. 
 
 It is all about those black-faced laborers whom you see 
 working in the cotton and rice and tobacco fields of the South. 
 They are slaves ; that is, they belong to the men they work 
 for, and can be sold as one would sell a bundle of goods. 
 Many men in the North say this is not right, but the planters 
 in the South say that the slaves are theirs and no one shall 
 rob them of their property. This is what they are talking 
 about so hotly in Congress and over the country. It is this 
 that in time brings on the dreadful Civil War. 
 
 Soon our train is stopped by the boom of cannon and we 
 know that the great conflict has begun. We start again and 
 sweep over the years 1861 to 1865, while before us and around 
 us are such scenes as we pray never to see 
 
 . 11 ,1 , Bloodshed 
 
 ■Bgam. All over the country men are assem- ^^^ strife 
 bling and marching, with waving banners and 
 shining guns. In a hundred places armies are fighting, and 
 men are falling by thousands on the blood-red soil. Terrible 
 battles are fought alike in East and West, and the whole 
 country seems full of bloodshed and strife. 
 
 Put on steam, engineer ! Hurry us on to the end of this 
 frightful war ; it is too terrible to look at long. Ah ! now we 
 behold a new scene. There, in a little village in western 
 Virginia, the great general of the Southern armies gives up his 
 sword to the great general of the North, and the war is at an 
 end. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have died, and only 
 one good thing is left us to think of — the slaves are free, and 
 the Union is saved. 
 
 Now we glide into a scene of peace and prosperity. The 
 plough has taken the place of the sword, and everybody, North 
 and South, is hard at work again. Never before did a coun- 
 try grow rich so fast. As we move on we see the fields yield- 
 
32 AMERICA FROM A CAR WINDOW 
 
 ing their corn and cotton, the mills producing their goods and 
 machines, the people fast increasing in numbers, and wealth 
 heaping up on all sides, until our country becomes the richest 
 on the face of the earth. 
 
 Great World's Fairs are opened and the people of the 
 
 nations are bidden to come and see all that we have to show. 
 
 They come and look on in wonder at the sight. And what 
 
 many of them most wonder at is the city of Chicago, where 
 
 the last of these Fairs is held. Sixty years ago 
 
 fII^s ^''''''*'^ ^^^^^ ^^^' ^ ^^^^^ village. Twenty years ago it 
 was set on fire and nearly burned to the ground. 
 Yet now it has more than a million people and is one of the 
 great cities of the earth. Is not this something to make 
 people wonder and stare ? Why, the genii of the Arabian 
 Nights could hardly have done more. 
 
 But here we are near the end of our century - long 
 journey. Look again, there is something more to see. In a 
 cold country of the north, which we bought from Russia many 
 years ago, men are busily at work digging gold. This frozen 
 soil of Alaska proves to be rich in the yellow metal. 
 
 And a year farther on the roar of cannon begins again.' 
 The United States are now at war with Spain, to punish that 
 country for its cruelty to the people of Cuba. It is soon 
 over ; the sound of the gun dies away ; Cuba is free, and our 
 country has spread out over far-off islands of the sea. It has 
 won islands in the East and the West, and is now lord of the 
 great sugar lands of the earth. 
 
 Here we are at last ! This noble station is that of the 
 year 1900. How grand and vast it is compared with that 
 from which we set out, a hundred years in the past ! Our 
 journey is at an end. We step out on the platform leading 
 to the twentieth century, and wonder what marvels it has in 
 store for us. Can they be greater than those we have seen ? 
 
•5:*"!I>J"'<i»- 
 
 ^^' 
 
NAPOLEON AND THE QUEEN OF PRUSSIA AT TILSIT (from the painting by gros) 
 
 Tiisit is a city of about 2^.000 inhabitants in Eastern Prussia. Here the Treaty of Peace between the French 
 and Russian Emperors and also between France and Prussia was signed in J uly. 1807. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A Bird's=Eye View of the Old World 
 
 HOPE every one of you enjoyed the trip through 
 time which we have just taken, for I am going 
 to ask you to set out with me on another jour- 
 ney, this time over the Old World. Do all of 
 my readers know where the Old World is ? Of 
 course there is only one world, which takes in the whole 
 earth. But after America was discovered men got in the way 
 of calling it the New World. Then the other continents, 
 which they had known so long, were called the Old W^orld. 
 In that way our one world was split up into two. This was 
 not correct, but it was an easy way of saying what could not 
 be said so easily any other way ; so it is still in use. 
 
 We took our trip through the New World by rail. That 
 is, we built a sort of railroad in the mind, and traveled on it 
 down the century. But the Old World is so 
 big and has so many countries that I think one 
 had better go over it by balloon, and look down on it as a 
 bird does when flying through the clouds. 
 
 Jump in the car, then ; cut loose the ropes ; hold on 
 tight, everybody ! Up we go, miles above the earth as it was 
 in the year 1800. Away we dart with the speed of the winds, 
 looking down on the broad lands which lie spread out like a 
 map beneath us. Over Europe and Asia and Africa we 
 swiftly glide, for these are the continents of the Old World. 
 Then we pass out to sea and float over the great island of 
 Australia, which is as large as a continent. 
 
 Off in a Balloon 
 
34 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD WORLD 
 
 But how little we see of the land beneath us. Clouds 
 spread thickly over it and blot out nearly the whole of 
 Australia and great regions of Africa and Asia. Remember 
 that we are in the year 1800, when very little was known 
 about those continents. A dense cloud of ignorance rested 
 upon them and hid them from view. As you look down you 
 will see that Europe is the only part of the Old World which 
 is free from clouds and can be seen from end to end. We 
 had better float slowly over that continent and take a bird's- 
 eye view of what is going on there. 
 
 We see below us a continent of many countries — little 
 and big, high and low. Everywhere there are great throngs 
 of people ; but, mercy on us ! how poorly they live and how 
 hard they work. Kings and nobles hold all the power, and 
 most of the people live and work like slaves. Look to the 
 far west and you will see the English islands. 
 H^rdw^k There the people have the most liberty. They 
 
 are beginning to see the dawn of better times. 
 Then as we float eastward over France and Germany, the 
 liberty of the people grows less. And when we come to 
 Russia, in the far east, we find that nearly all the people are 
 slaves. In Turkey, which lies to the south, we reach a land 
 in which no one dreams of freedom. Do not forget that we 
 are looking at Europe in the year 1800. You would see 
 much more liberty there if you were in 1900. 
 
 Let us sail down the early years of the century, and see 
 what they have to show us. War ! war ! fighting everywhere 1 
 All Europe in turmoil ! Soldiers marching, drums beating, 
 guns thundering, houses burning, people bleeding and dying, 
 while over it all waves a blood-red flag, on which is the one 
 word "Glory." But the glory it means is that won on the 
 battle-field ; that which evil spirits revel in and which good 
 men detest. 
 
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD WORLD 35 
 
 We see, far beneath us, the great armies of France, led 
 by the terrible Napoleon, marching over Europe, while the 
 armies of the other nations gather to oppose him. It is to one 
 man that the world owes all this death and terror. Millions 
 must suffer and die so that he can win glory. And yet, when 
 this man fails and falls, there are many who pity him. But I 
 hope all my readers love deeds of great good more than deeds 
 of great evil. History lays flowers on the graves of great 
 conquerors, but they are flowers wet with blood. 
 
 Away we go again down the years. The famous soldier 
 is dying on an island in the far ocean, the wars are over, the 
 dead are buried, the burned homes are built 
 again, peace is on the land. But peace has not ^^^^^^ Ln>ert 
 brought liberty, hard work does not yield plenty 
 and comfort, life is hard to live in Europe except for the 
 nobles and kings, and for years the people suffer still. 
 
 Of all the countries beneath us England is the busiest 
 and happiest. From all her ports ships are sailing, setting 
 out for the uttermost parts of the earth, deep laden with goods 
 for distant lands. And others are coming in laden with the 
 richest products of the world. Over all the island factories 
 are rising and wheels are whirling. From our high outlook 
 the country beneath us looks like a great ant-hill, with the 
 ants hastening to and fro, all of them actively at work. 
 
 England is the busiest, but the other nations are busy. 
 We see the red flames of battle die out in France and the 
 white banners of peace waving over her cities. Her people 
 are active, in peace as in war, and plenty is coming back 
 again. And as we sweep on over Europe we see men at 
 work everywhere, and the whole continent growing rich and 
 prosperous. 
 
 But ah ! the trumpet sounds again, and from afar comes 
 the long roll of the drum. The demon of war, banished from 
 
36 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD WORLn 
 
 the earth, is here with his red banner once more. There are 
 still kings who love glory ; there are nations moved by ambi- 
 tion ; there are peoples weary of being slaves. So from time 
 to time through the years the torch of war is kindled and 
 waved over bloody battle-fields. 
 
 I shall not tell you here about these wars. We are now 
 
 taking a bird's-eye view, looking down on Europe as we glide 
 
 rapidly through the years. We shall come down to the earth 
 
 in later chapters and take a closer look at the 
 
 Outlines for the i j ^i • i • a i.- i. i 
 
 ^ people and their kmgs. An artist, you know, 
 
 draws his picture first in a few strong lines, and 
 then fills in between the lines. Here we are drawing the out- 
 lines for our picture of the century ; we shall fill it in later. 
 
 All I need say here is that there were wars between 
 Russia and Turkey, France and Austria, Prussia and Austria, 
 and a great war between Germany and France. These were 
 all due to ambition and land hunger. Russia was not big 
 enough. She wanted a slice of Turkey for her Christmas 
 dinner. And there was another Napoleon who tried to win 
 glory, and who lost his throne as his great uncle had done. 
 
 The people, too, fought for liberty and union. In Italy 
 they fought for union ; in France, for liberty. In Hungary 
 and Germany and Greece and other countries the people rose 
 and struck for freedom. And as we sweep on down the cen- 
 tury we find they have not fought in vain. Italy is united 
 into one kingdom ; France is a republic ; everywhere except 
 in the east the kings have lost power and the people have 
 gained liberty, and in Russia the slaves have been set free. 
 In 1900 we look down on a very different Europe from that 
 which we saw in 1800. 
 
 Now let us put our air-ship before the wind and sail off 
 elsewhere over the earth. Europe is not the world, though 
 some of the people of that proud continent seem to think it is. 
 
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD WORLD 37 
 
 It is not even all the Old World, for there are Asia and 
 Africa and the islands of the seas. So off we go again to see 
 if the clouds have fled and revealed hidden lands. 
 
 Yes, the clouds are rising. Year by year we see them 
 grow thinner and fade out. Let us look down on Africa. See 
 those bold travelers who are making their way inland, from 
 the north and the south, from the east and the west. Fierce 
 chiefs and savage tribes try to stop them. Many of them 
 suffer, some of them are slain, but the most of them come 
 back to tell the world about what the clouds so long concealed. 
 
 While the years go by we look down on some of these 
 daring men as they cross the continent from sea to sea. They 
 tell the world of rich soils, crowded countries, strange won- 
 ders of nature. The cloud is fading out. We see the fruitful 
 plains of Africa spreading far and wide, while 
 the nations of ^urope are sending ships and j^l^^^ '" 
 soldiers to claim those fruitful realms as their 
 own. It sounds like a story we have read before, that of the 
 Europeans who came to America and took it from the red- 
 skinned natives. Now the nations of Europe are beginning to 
 take Africa from the blacks. 
 
 As we look down from our lofty perch we see fighting 
 going on. The English are fighting in Egypt, in Abyssinia, 
 in Guinea, and in other places. And at the very end of the 
 century we see them fighting in the far south, not with the 
 Arabs or the blacks, but with the old Dutch settlers of the 
 land. Here are mines of the yellow gold and the glittering 
 diamond, and love of these brings the century to an end in war. 
 
 Fresh blow the southwest winds. Let us put our air-ship 
 before them and sail away to distant Asia. Ah ! here, too, the 
 English are before us. They hold the great peninsula of 
 India in the south. Through this crowded land they make 
 their way with sword and gun, conquering kings and chiefs, 
 
38 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD WORLD 
 
 putting down rebellion, spreading their power on all sides, 
 until they are lords of a nation that counts its people by hun- 
 dreds of millions. 
 
 As we float farther north the clouds spread below us and 
 hide the great inner country from our eyes. Now and then 
 we see a traveler making his way in and coming back with a 
 strange story of adventure and discovery. And later on 
 armies begin to take the place of travelers. Russia, which 
 has been driven out of Turkey, now seeks to win the heart of 
 Asia. The cloud rises as the armies press forward. The 
 people fisrht fiercely for their homes, but the 
 
 Russia in Asia \ ^ -l i t-. • • 
 
 armies march on. In the end Russia wins and 
 Central Asia is hers. That great continent, in which so 
 many nations have lived and died, is now nearly all held 
 by three strong powers — Russia, England and China. Only 
 Turkey, Persia and Arabia remain, and Russia is laying her 
 plans to add these to her mighty empire. 
 
 Turn your eyes to the far east, for a great event is there 
 to take place. Off the coast of Asia lies a group of islands 
 over which the clouds have long been dense. This is the 
 empire of Japan, whose doors for centuries have been closed 
 against the people of Europe. But as we look the cloud 
 quickly lifts and floats away, and Japan spreads far and clear 
 beneath us. It has opened its doors at last, and travelers and 
 merchants are swarming in. 
 
 Civilization comes in with the strangers, Japan has 
 become suddenly very much alive. Its people begin to read 
 and study. They throw off their old ways and take on new 
 ones. They build telegraphs and railroads, buy iron-clad 
 ships of war, drill armies, and soon they are at war with 
 China and have beaten that great empire, with its vast popula- 
 tion. The awakening of Japan is a marvelous story. There 
 is nothing like it in the history of the world. 
 
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD WORLD 39 
 
 But we have not covered all the Old World yet. We 
 must end our long journey by sweeping swiftly over the great 
 Pacific Ocean, with its multitude of islands, and noting what 
 the century is doing there. 
 
 Once more England is ahead of us. The largest of these 
 ocean realms, the great island of Australia, is English soil, 
 and as we gaze it grows from a small colony into a powerful 
 nation. At the very end of the century we see the scattered 
 colonies joining into a powerful union, which 
 we may call the United States of the South yj^^^^ 
 Seas. England holds them still, but it is like 
 a boy holding an ox with a string. England dare not pull 
 too hard for fear they will break the string and set out a great 
 independent country. 
 
 Sweeping on, right and left over the ocean, we see the 
 powers of Europe taking possession of its many islands, and 
 planting civilization where only savagery ruled before. And 
 last of all comes our own country, laying its hand on the 
 Philippine Islands. At the very end of the century the United 
 States leaps out from the New World and gains a foothold in 
 the Old. 
 
 This ends the story of the century in the great world of 
 the East. It is a remarkable story. Civilization has marched 
 on like a mighty army. Barbarism and savagery have fallen 
 back before it. Railroads are being built widely over Asia 
 and Africa. The telegraph runs there over broad lands and 
 under mighty seas. The book, the school, and the church are 
 following the warship and the army. With the year 1900 the 
 old story of the East reaches its end. What the twentieth 
 century will bring to that great region no man can say. The 
 change in the past has been wonderful ; in the future it may 
 be more wonderful still. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Napoleon, the Great Conqueror 
 
 AM going to say something here about what 
 seems to me a very wrong thing. When I tell 
 you what it is I hope you will all agree with 
 me. It is about the way people use the word 
 "great." In the study of history we keep com- 
 ing across men who are called "great." There are Alex- 
 ander the Great, Charles the Great, Frederick the Great, 
 Napoleon the Great, and others I might name. But when 
 we come to read about them we find these men were great 
 only in the number of men they killed. He who kills one 
 man to steal his purse is hung as a murderer ; but he who 
 kills a million men to steal their kingdoms is called great 
 and is made a hero of history, and people are 
 ready to fall on their knees, and worship him. 
 I do not like this, and I hope you do not. 
 Nobody speaks of Homer the Great, or Shakespeare the .Great, 
 or Lincoln the Great, or a hundred others, every one of whom 
 is greater than the greatest conqueror". If we wish to call 
 men great we ought to pick out those who have been great 
 for good, not those who have been great for evil. Living- 
 stone, the noble traveler, was a much greater man than 
 Napoleon, the ruthless conqueror. I shall tell you about 
 Livingstone later on, but here I must give you the story of 
 Napoleon, since he had so much to do with the history of 
 the nineteenth century. 
 
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NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 41 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte began life as a poor boy. He was 
 born in the little island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea. 
 Corsica then belonged to France, and this made him a French 
 citizen, so he went to a military school in France and learned 
 the trade of a soldier. Then he went into the army, but for 
 a number of years he was kept down at the bottom of the 
 ladder, and it looked as if he would never begin to climb. 
 He got out of heart, and walked about the streets of Paris 
 with an empty pocket, just as men do when they come to a 
 strange city to look for work. If he had only jumped over- 
 board and drowned himself at that time it would have been 
 a bad thing for Napoleon, but it would have been a good 
 thing for the hundreds of thousands of men who were after- 
 wards killed in his battles. 
 
 How did this poor, down-hearted soldier come to be the 
 most celebrated general and conqueror of the nineteenth 
 century ? That is what I propose to tell you. When the 
 century began Napoleon Bonaparte was the 
 most famous man in the world, and for fifteen }^^ French 
 
 Revolution 
 
 years afterwards the history of this wonderful 
 soldier was the history of Europe. So the first stage of our 
 rapid journey through the century must be given to the story 
 of Napoleon the Conqueror. 
 
 Napoleon was a great military genius, but like all such 
 men he needed a great chance, and this came to him with the 
 French Revolution. Many of you may have read how, in 
 1789, the French people rose against their king, and over- 
 turned the government which had lasted a thousand years, 
 and so hated the king and queen, the nobles and priests, that 
 they cut off the heads of all they could lay their hands on. 
 There was so terrible a state of affairs in France that all who 
 could escape left the country, and these got the other kings 
 of Europe to send armies to put down the Revolution. This 
 
42 NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 
 
 brought on war on all sides of the country and gave Napo- 
 leon the chance that was to make him great and famous. 
 
 I am going to give you only a bird's-eye view of the 
 career of Napoleon, such a view as you would have of events 
 on the earth if you looked down on them from a great height 
 in the air. He won his first victory over the mob in the 
 streets of Paris. The law-makers of the Revolution called on 
 him to defend them from the mob, and Napoleon did so by 
 loading his cannon and firing at the rioters. The generals 
 before him had fired blank cartridges. He fired cannon balls 
 and scared the mob out of its wits. That put an end to the 
 Revolution. 
 
 Napoleon was then sent with an army to Italy, and there 
 he won a wonderful victory over the Austrians. In a short 
 time he conquered nearly all Italy, and made 
 apo eon in -^ ^ republic like France. People everywhere 
 
 began to read of him with wonder. They saw 
 that a great soldier had come into the world. Not for cen- 
 turies had there been such victories as his. 
 
 When Napoleon came back from Italy to France the 
 people were almost ready to worship him. The French peo- 
 ple, you should know, have always been fonder of great 
 soldiers than of great men of any other kind. But Napoleon 
 knew that he must keep on winning battles or the people 
 would soon get tired of praising him. So, as there was no 
 other army to fight with in Europe, he put an army on ship- 
 board and sailed away to Egypt, where he began to fight with 
 the Arabs and the Turks. 
 
 I cannot say what he hoped to do there. Perhaps he 
 thought he would set free the Holy Land from the Turks, as 
 the Crusaders had tried to do many centuries before, and in 
 this way win great glory. But the English followed him to 
 Egypt and sunk his ships, and stopped his marches, and gave 
 
NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 43 
 
 him SO much trouble that he got tired of it and sailed back to 
 France. Here he was made First Consul, which gave him 
 almost the power of a king. That was the way things stood 
 in France in the year 1800. 
 
 Have any of you ever been at the theatre and seen a 
 jgreat tragic play like some of Shakespeare's, where soldiers 
 Jmarch on the stage, and batttes are fought, and victories won, 
 and in the end the right is triumphant and the wrong is over- 
 thrown ? If you have you will know what I mean when I 
 say that for the first fifteen years of the eighteenth century 
 Europe was like a great stage on which a 
 mighty tragedy is being played. There was ^^ ^ °"^^ 
 marching to and fro, and beating of drums, 
 and roar of cannon, and battles were lost and won. And in 
 the end the mighty hero of the play was defeated and over- 
 thrown. If you want a name for this wonderful drama, I 
 might call it "The Career of Napoleon the Conqueror." I 
 am going to tell you in this chapter the story of that great 
 tragedy. 
 
 Napoleon was not long back from Egypt before France 
 was at war again. The fleets of England were on the sea 
 seeking to destroy the fleets of France. And Austria, whose 
 armies Napoleon had defeated before, had new armies in the 
 field. The largest of these armies was in Italy, where Napo- 
 leon had beaten them once, and where he determined to fight 
 them again. 
 
 Between France and Switzerland on the north and Italy 
 on the south there lies a great mountain wall, the Alps. 
 These mountains are very high and their tops are always 
 white with snow. Two thousand years ago Hannibal, one 
 of the great generals of ancient times, led an army across 
 these mountains to attack the armies of Rome. Napoleon 
 thought he could do what Hannibal had done, so he took his 
 
44 NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 
 
 army across the mountain heights, through steep and broken 
 passes in which ice and snow He all the year. It was a terri- 
 ble journey. Heavy cannons had to be dragged with ropes 
 over the hills, and wagon-loads of food to be taken through 
 the rough passes. But Napoleon rode with his army and 
 cheered his men and nothing could stop them, neither cold 
 winds, nor deep snows, nor rugged rocks. Soon they were 
 past all dangers and came down on the level plain of Italy. 
 
 The Austrians did not dream of an army coming on them 
 from the mountains, like a great host of war eagles descend- 
 ing from the clouds. They were scattered about, here and 
 there, and you may be sure there was a busy time in bringing 
 them together again. Napoleon and his army came upon 
 them at a place called Marengo, where a terrible 
 ^ro ing e battle took place. The Austrians fought so 
 hard that the French were for a time defeated, 
 and their general sent off word that he had beaten the ter- 
 rible Corsican. But while his messenger was riding away 
 some fresh soldiers came up to join Napoleon, and in a little 
 time the Austrian Army was broken to pieces and fleeing in 
 haste from the field. 
 
 That was one great victory. Others were won and 
 Austria was forced to beg for peace. Not long afterwards, in 
 1802, peace was made between England and France, and 
 Napoleon was triumphant over ail his enemies. He could do 
 what he pleased with the people of France. If he had asked 
 them to worship him as a god some of them would have done 
 so. He had brought them so much glory that many looked 
 on him as more than a man. What he wanted was to make 
 a great show before the world. Ten years before he had been 
 wandering about the streets of Paris, with nothing to do and 
 not always sure of getting a dinner. Now he was the most 
 famous man and most powerful ruler in Europe. But he had 
 
NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 45 
 
 no title except that of First Consul. That was- not enough 
 for his ambition. He might have made himself King, but 
 Emperor sounded larger, so he made himself Emperor. He 
 was elected Emperor of the French by the people, and was 
 crowned by the Pope on the 2d of December, 1805. The 
 little Corsican had made a great leap upwards. 
 
 -PU 1- 1 .1 Napoleon is 
 
 1 he new emperor did not have peace very ,. ^ ^^ 
 
 ^ . Made Emperor 
 
 long, and I do not fancy he wanted it. None of 
 the monarchs could trust him. He would break his word when- 
 ever he thought he could gain anything by it. He seemed to 
 be so fond of power and glory that he would force the nations 
 to war that he might beat them in the field and gain the 
 fame of being one of the greatest conquerors ever known. 
 
 Very soon England was at war with him again, and 
 afterwards came Austria and Russia and Prussia. He met 
 and defeated them all except England. It would be too long 
 to tell you about all his great victories. There were Auster- 
 litz and Jena and Friedland and Wagram and many more, 
 in which the Austrians and Russians and Prussians were 
 defeated. No army could beat him in the field. The French 
 were ready to follow him to death, for he brought them the 
 glory that they loved so well. And every victory gave him 
 greater power, until he had all western Europe under his 
 thumb, and no king of them all dared do anything which did 
 not please the Corsican conqueror. 
 
 But too much glory is like too much wine or brandy, one 
 grows intoxicated with it. Napoleon became drunk with 
 glory, and like all drunkards he wanted more and more. All 
 Europe was now at his feet except Russia, and he determined 
 that the great empire of the north should be his slave like the 
 others. So he gathered one of the mightiest armies Europe 
 had ever seen. It was made up not only of French, but of 
 Austrians and Prussians and Italians and other peoples, there 
 
46 NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 
 
 being more than 600,000 soldiers in all, with as many more 
 who were not soldiers, but what are called camp followers. 
 
 At the beginning of July, 181 2, the Grand Army, as it 
 was called, crossed the Niemen River and began its march on 
 Russian soil. Oh ! if it had known to what a terrible fate it 
 was going ! In all history there is no greater tragedy than 
 that of the Grand Army. On and on, across the vast plains 
 of Russia, went the mighty host. It was eager 
 Arm *"*" ^^ fight, but there was nobody to fight with. 
 
 The Russian army kept just out of reach. It 
 was hot summer weather and the men fell out of their ranks 
 as fast as they would have done in a great battle. For two 
 months they went on, marching to Moscow, the old capital of 
 Russia. When they got there more than half the Grand 
 Army had disappeared. 
 
 At length the great city rose before them, with its gilded 
 cupolas and lofty spires shining in the bright rays of the sun. 
 Into the splendid capital marched the troops, full of joy, and 
 expecting to see a great multitude of people. To their aston- 
 ishment there was no one to be seen. It was an empty city. 
 Its inhabitants were gone. They had vanished like the mist 
 of the morning. But Napoleon was master of the grand old 
 capital of Russia, and he thought the emperor would now be 
 glad to make peace with him. 
 
 But he was to have a frightful awakening from his dream 
 of glory. The morning after the army had entered Moscow 
 in triumph terrible news were brought to the conqueror. The 
 city was on fire. Flames were bursting out in a dozen places. 
 There was a high wind, which carried them swiftly from house 
 to house until the whole city became a mighty mass of flame. 
 The Russians had set the city on fire and all the Grand Army 
 could not put it out. For three days it burned, and when at 
 length the flames sank away only a heap of ashes remained. 
 
NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 47 
 
 Moscow was the grave of Napoleon's glory. He waited 
 in the ashes of the city for the emperor of Russia to ask for 
 peace. But no word came from the emperor, and the Grand 
 Army was forced to march away again, glad no longer, but 
 sad and despairing. The Russian armies followed it and 
 attacked it at every point. The terrible Rus- 
 sian winter came upon it, and more men died ^^ ^^" ^ 
 from the bitter cOld than from the Russian 
 guns. It was the most dreadful march in history. In the 
 middle of December about 16,000 men crossed the Niemen, 
 ragged and weary ghosts of soldiers, all that were left of the 
 600,000 splendidly arrayed warriors who had crossed that 
 river six months before. 
 
 Back through Europe went this worn-out fragment of the 
 Grand Army. Napoleon brought up other soldiers and fought 
 his foes at a dozen points. But now he was fighting for life, 
 not for glory. As he went back his allies fell off. The Prus- 
 sians and Austrians left him and joined the Russians against 
 him. They hated him so that they took the first opportunity 
 for revenge. He won new victories, but at length, at the 
 terrible battle of Leipzig, he met with a fatal defeat, and had 
 to lead his bleeding columns back to France. 
 
 After him hastened a vast army made up of nearly all the 
 nations of Europe, all those who had felt the cruel hand of the 
 Conqueror and were now joined together for his defeat. He 
 fought until he could fight no longer, and then 
 he was forced to yield. The monarchs of Europe ^^ 
 made him give up his throne, and sent him to 
 the little island of Elba, in the Mediterranean Sea. He who 
 had led an army of 600,000 men had now only 400 of his old 
 soldiers ; he who had lorded it over half of Europe had only 
 a small piece of land in the open sea. " How had the mighty 
 fallen ! " 
 
48 NAPOLEON, THE GREAT CONQUEROR 
 
 But the enemies of the fallen emperor made one mistake. 
 Elba was much too near to France and they did not watch 
 him closely enough. In less than a year he gave them the slip, 
 took ship across the sea, and was back in France again. Some 
 of his old officers and soldiers were sent to stop him, but when 
 Napoleon spoke to them they threw down their arms and 
 rushed to welcome him. Back to Paris he marched in 
 triumph, and once again he was emperor of France and with 
 an army under his command. 
 
 When news of this spread through Europe there was a 
 terrible fright. The wolf was out of his cage ! The mighty 
 war lord was abroad again ! The rulers trem- 
 in France ^^ hX^^ with fear as they thought of the past fifteen 
 years. There was no time to lose. The armies 
 were called out in haste and set on the march back to France. 
 It was not safe to give the Corsican too much time. 
 
 Napoleon's new reign lasted just one hundred days. In 
 the middle of June, 1815, he met an army of English and 
 Prussians on the field of Waterloo, near Brussels, in Belgium. 
 
 Here the Conqueror fought his last and one of his 
 greatest battles. Never did he fight better, never did the 
 French show more courage ; but fortune was against him and 
 the great battle was lost. Napoleon fled from the field with 
 hardly a soldier to follow him. 
 
 That was the end of the mighty drama. He fell into the 
 hands of his old enemies, the English, who now sent him to 
 the rocky island of St. Helena, far away in the South Atlantic 
 Ocean. They were determined that he should not come back 
 again. They w^atched him there like a prisoner in his cell. In 
 a few years he died, and then, for the first time since the 
 beginning of the century, Europe breathed free. The great 
 war lord was no more. 
 
WELLINGTON AT WATERLOO GIVING THE WORD TO ADVANCE 
 
 •Ihis spirited illustration figures the final event in the .n.ighty struggle at Waterloo when the F eh fterh^^^^^^^ 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Nelson the Sailor and Wellington the 
 
 Soldier 
 
 THINK 1 shall have to ask you to look at the 
 map of Europe again. Near the western coast 
 of France you will see a little group of islands. 
 There is a large one on which you will perceive 
 two names, England and Scotland, and a smaller 
 one named Ireland, and several tiny ones scattered around 
 them like crumbs of land. The whole of them do not take 
 up much room on the map. If you were in a hurry you 
 might pass over them without noticing them at all. But 
 small as they are these islands take up a great deal of room 
 in the history of the world. In the story of the world for a 
 few hundred years back you will read more about England 
 than about any other nation on the earth. 
 
 Why is this ? What is there in this half of an island 
 that makes historians talk so much about it ? I can tell you 
 in a very few words. It is because the English have been 
 the most active and enterprising people on the 
 globe. If you had gone to any part of the 
 world you would have seen many more English 
 ships than those of any other nation. Also the great travelers 
 and discoverers were most of them English, and there was 
 no country in the w^orld with so many mines and workshops 
 and such a rattle of wheels. Canada, India, Australia, and 
 large parts of Africa belonged to England. The United 
 
 49 
 
 The Half of an 
 Island 
 
50 NELSON THE SAILOR— WELLINGTON THE SOLDIER 
 
 States was settled by the English. Thus England, though 
 only a part of a small island, had become the most active 
 country on the globe. 
 
 All the nations of Europe fought with Napoleon Bona- 
 parte, and they were all beaten except England. If it had 
 not been for the people of that island Napoleon might have 
 become the emperor of Europe. So you see I cannot give 
 the story of the nineteenth century without saying a good 
 deal about England. 
 
 I have told you about the great French soldier and con- 
 queror. Now I must say something about the two English 
 warriors who had so much to do with his overthrow — Nelson, 
 the hero of the seas, and Wellington, the victor at Waterloo. 
 
 Napoleon was the lord of the land, but he was never the 
 
 lord of the sea. And that was because his ships had to fight 
 
 with one of the greatest sailors that was ever 
 
 e son, e known, Horatio Nelson, the famous British 
 
 Sea-King ' ' 
 
 admiral. Napoleon was a soldier, not a sailor. 
 At sea he had to trust to his captains, and the best of them 
 were no match for Nelson, the sea-king. I cannot tell you 
 about all the victories of this valiant sailor, so I shall speak 
 only of the two greatest, those of Aboukir and Trafalgar. 
 
 When Napoleon went to Egypt he took a strong fleet 
 with him, and while he was fighting on land his ships lay in 
 Aboukir Bay, waiting until he should be ready to return home. 
 Here Nelson came in sight of them on the ist of August 
 1798, and one of the most famous of naval battles was fought. 
 
 The French were stronger than the British. They had 
 more ships, more guns, and more men. They were drawn 
 up in line of battle, with the land behind them and the sea 
 before them, and it looked as if they could drive off a force twice 
 their own. But in one thing they failed, they did not have a 
 Nelson to command them, and that made all the difference 
 
NELSON, THE SAILOR— WELLINGTON, THE SOLDIER 51 
 
 *' Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a vic- 
 tory or Westminster Abbey," said Nelson. He meant by this 
 that he would fight till he was victorious or dead, and would 
 win such glory that his countrymen would be glad to bury 
 him in Westminster Abbey, where the noblest of the English 
 have their tombs. 
 
 I shall not tell you the full story of this battle. It was 
 fought in the eighteenth century, and this book is about the 
 nineteenth. But I may say that the " Battle of the Nile," as 
 it is called, was one of the most glorious of English naval 
 victories. Nelson was a man who did not know what it 
 means to fail. He attacked the French with the fierceness of 
 the sea-dogs of old times, and when he was done there was 
 no French fleet left. Thirteen great ships-of-the-line were in 
 the French fleet, and of these only two escaped. Of four 
 frigates, one was sunk and one was burned. 
 The British lost 895 men, but the loss of the t^^iyj^ 
 French was 5,225. Nelson suddenly became a 
 famous man. He was like our own Admiral Dewey, for one 
 day's work set all the world to talking about him. It is 
 curious that the Battle of the Nile was fought just one hun- 
 dred years before the Battle of Manila Bay. If you ask what 
 important result came from Nelson's victory, I will answer 
 that it cut off the French army from France. When Napo- 
 leon was ready to go home again he was not able to take 
 his soldiers with him, for his powerful fleet had ceased to 
 exist ; so he had to go alone in a fast ship and leave his men 
 behind. It was not long before they were forced to surrender 
 to their enemies ; so you may see that Nelson on the sea got 
 the best of Napoleon on land. 
 
 Now I must tell you about Nelson's great victory at 
 Trafalgar, which took place in the year 1805. Napoleon at 
 that time had a very strong fleet, for the war-vessels of Spain 
 
52 NELSON, THE SAILOR— WELLINGTON, THE SOLDIER 
 
 were added to those of France. But Nelson did not care how 
 many of them there were ; all he asked was the chance to fight 
 them. The French and Spaniards sailed to the West Indies, 
 and he followed them. They sailed home again, and he fol- 
 lowed them back. And when, on the 19th of October, they 
 set sail from the port of Cadiz — thirty-four great ships-of-the- 
 line and many smaller craft — Nelson was still hot upon their 
 track. And he was a glad man that day, for he was sure that 
 he had them now. 
 
 I am afraid that if you had seen those ships you would 
 have laughed at the idea of their fighting battles. Now-a-days 
 a warship is a grim-looking thing of steel and iron, with steam 
 to drive it through the waves and huge guns that think noth- 
 ing of hurling a great ball five or six miles. The ships of a 
 century ago were as different from these as 
 Warships a ^^ ^^^j^ ^^^jj 1^^ ^j^ ^^^^^ clumsy-looking 
 
 Century Ago ■' ■ •' . 
 
 craft, with broad bows and high wooden sides 
 lifting far out of the sea, and tall masts with a great show 
 of white sails, for the wind did then what steam does to-day. 
 One of our battleships would soon have sent Lord Nelson's 
 fleet, with its wooden sides and little guns, to the bottom 
 of the sea. But he had ships of his own kind to fight with, 
 so one side was as good as the other, and their guns were so 
 small that they had to come close together to fight at all. 
 
 The English and French fleets met off Cape Trafalgar, 
 near the southern end of Spain. When Nelson saw the 
 enemy before him he was very glad. He hoisted the signal, 
 "England expects that every man to-day will do his duty." 
 The people of England have been proud of that signal ever 
 since, and it has become a national watchword that "England 
 expects every man to do his duty." 
 
 Nelson was not long in getting to work. In sailed his 
 ships and soon the roar of cannon was heard, splinters began 
 
NELSON, THE SAILOR— WELLINGTON, THE SOLDIER 53 
 
 to fly, and men to fall. It was the most famous sea-battle in 
 all history. Nelson pushed his flagship into the midst of the 
 French fleet until there were eight ships around it pouring in 
 cannon balls, while for a time it could not fire a shot back. 
 But the British sailors kept to their guns and waited their 
 chance. When it came they amply repaid the French for all 
 they had lost, while everywhere around them the fight went 
 hotly on. 
 
 The English conquered, but Nelson fell. In the thick of 
 the fight a musket ball struck him in the back, and he dropped 
 on the deck with a mortal wound. While the battle went on 
 he was slowly dying. Captain Hardy, the com- 
 mander of his ship, came to tell him that all ^^ ^ ^ **"" '"^ 
 was going well. "I'm a dead man. Hardy;" 
 he said, "but I'm glad of what you say. Whip them, now 
 you've got them. Whip them as they've never been whipped 
 before." 
 
 Captain Hardy obeyed orders. He whipped them well, 
 and Nelson lived to know it. Then the spirit of the great 
 admiral floated away on the wings of victory. He had won 
 the greatest sea-fight in English history. His country did all 
 it could to honor him. It had made him a lord and a high 
 admiral. Now it gave him a splendid tomb — not in West- 
 minster Abbey ,but in the Cathedral of St. Paul, where it may 
 be seen to-day. 
 
 While Lord Nelson was fighting the French at sea, 
 another great Englishman, Sir Arthur Wellesley, or Lord 
 Wellington, as he was afterwards named, was fighting them 
 on land. When he was only plain Sir Arthur, he had been a 
 soldier and won victories in India. Then, when Napoleon 
 took possession of Spain and Portugal as a man might walk 
 into his neighbor's house and take possession of his parlor and 
 dining room, this soldier from India was sent to Portugal to 
 
54 NELSON, THE SAILOR— WELLINGTON, THE SOLDIER 
 
 fight the French. He was there in 1808, and he stayed there 
 till 18 1 4, when Napoleon was sent to Elba. 
 
 First, he drove the French out of Portugal. Then he 
 followed them into Spain, and fought them there, winning 
 victory after victory, till the French were driven out of Spain 
 as they had been out of Portugal. Napoleon was angry 
 enough when he found this Englishman defeating his best 
 generals. He would have gone to Spain to fight Wellington 
 himself if it had not been for his plan of making war on 
 Russia. Thus it happened that Wellington and Napoleon 
 never met in battle till 181 5, during the famous "hundred 
 days " of v.-hich you read in the last chapter. 
 
 I told you then about the panic the kings of Europe were 
 in when they heard that their dangerous enemy had escaped 
 and was back again in France. Everywhere soldiers were 
 gathered with the greatest haste, and set in 
 Belgium march for the soil of France. In the British 
 
 Islands every man in arms was hurried to the 
 sea and sent on ships to Belgium, the country which lies 
 north of France. At their head was Lord Wellington, 
 England's most famous soldier. When he got to Belgium 
 he found there soldiers of half-a-dozen nations, Dutch, Belgi- 
 ans, Germans, and others, all of whom were put under his 
 command. Near by was a strong army of Prussians, under 
 Marshal Bliicher, a bold and able general. And not far away 
 was Napoleon's army, which he had gathered in all haste to 
 meet his foes. In it were many of his old soldiers, and many 
 new recruits, most of them little more than boys, for the wars 
 of the past had not left many men in France. 
 
 Soon the armies met, and there was some hard fighting. 
 Blucher was defeated and driven back. After the fight Wel- 
 lington withdrew and encamped on a field which has ever 
 since been famous — the field of Waterloo. It was the evening 
 
NELSON, THE SAILOR— WELLINGTON, THE SOLDIER 55 
 
 of the I yth of June. Rain was falling heavily, the water turned 
 the roads into streams, and the fields were like swamps. All 
 night long the rain came down, and the soldiers, worn out 
 with their long march, flung themselves down in the mud to 
 try and sleep. When morning broke the rain stopped, and 
 they built fires to dry themselves as well they could. 
 
 That day, the i8th of June, 18 15, was the day of the 
 most famous battle in modern history, for it was the day in 
 which the sun of Napoleon Bonaparte, the mighty conqueror, 
 set never to rise again. Wellington and his army waited. 
 They knew what that day meant for the world. If they were 
 beaten, the French emperor might become the master of 
 Europe again. If they were victorious, his power would be 
 at an end. Never had victory been more 
 
 ^ 1. J r li- r u T^he Struggle at 
 
 important, and every man lelt as 11 he was YVaterioo 
 fighting for home and freedom. 
 
 It was just before noon when the two armies came 
 together, the French attacking the English on the defence. 
 In the middle of the battle-field was a strong stone house 
 called Hougoumont, with outbuildings and walls around it, 
 and here for hours a terrible struggle went on. The British 
 held it, and all day long the French tried their best to take it 
 from them, but in vain. At two o'clock the great body of the 
 French army threw itself on the British lines, and fought des- 
 perately to break through. For more than an hour the terrific 
 fight went on, cannons roared, muskets flashed, sabres 
 gleamed, men fell in hundreds and were trampled into the 
 mud. Twice, thrice, the French came on, and as often were 
 driven back. In the end, they were repulsed with fearful 
 loss. But Wellington's men lost heavily also, and could not 
 have stood another such attack. 
 
 I have told you how Bliicher and his Prussians were 
 defeated two days before by the French. He had retreated, 
 
56 NELSON, THE SAILOR— WELLINGTON, THE SOLDIER 
 
 with a French force under Marshal Grouchy in pursuit. 
 Where were these two armies ? Both sides prayed that they 
 would come ; Napoleon for Grouchy, Wellington for Blucher. 
 The one that came first would decide the fate of the mighty 
 battle. 
 
 It was half-past four in the afternoon when, from the 
 woods of St. Lambert at a distance, a column of troops came 
 into view. All eyes were fixed on them with hope or fear. 
 Who were they — Blucher and his Prussians, or Grouchy and 
 his French ? It was not long before the armies knew. They 
 were the Prussians. There were no signs of the French. 
 Unless they came quickly, all was at an end for Napoleon. 
 
 The French Emperor prayed for night or Grouchy — but 
 
 night was too far off, and Grouchy came not. Napoleon was 
 
 desperate. So far he had held back his 
 
 Qrouch*'^ famous Imperial Guard, the flower of his army, 
 
 now he sent them against his enemies, with 
 
 the famous Marshal Ney at their head. 
 
 Then came the most terrible moment of a terrible day. 
 A torrent of flame poured on the Guard, and they fell in bleed- 
 ing heaps. Soon, in a wild charge, the British Foot Guards 
 rushed upon them, surrounded them, shot them down in 
 winrows, and called on them to surrender. 
 
 "The Guard dies, but never surrenders!" cried their 
 brave leader, and they fought on until the last of them fell 
 dead. 
 
 That was the end. What was left of Napoleon's army 
 turned and fled in a panic, taking their leader with them, 
 Waterloo was the end of his career as a soldier ; the remain- 
 der of his life was to be spent on the rocky island of St. 
 Helena, as a captive. The sun of Napoleon had set," and Lord 
 Wellington loomed up as the hero of Europe, the only man 
 who had ever met Napoleon on equal terms and defeated him. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Champion of Right and the Tribune 
 
 of the People 
 
 OU must be tired by this time of reading about 
 fighting men, and be ready to hear something 
 about other people. Of course we all get excited 
 over the boom of the gun and the flash of the 
 sword. When we hear of how men fought 
 for their lives it makes our blood flow faster and our hearts 
 beat louder. That is why the writers of history like to tell the 
 story of war. They know how their readers are thrilled by the 
 tale of battle and blood, and all "the pomp and circumstance 
 of glorious war," as Shakespeare calls it. 
 
 But men do not spend all their time in fighting. After 
 a few years of war there come many years of peace, and it is 
 in those years that the greatest things are done for the world. 
 The business of war is to tear down, the busi- 
 
 The Victories 
 
 ness of peace is to build up, and the victories ^^ p^^^ 
 of peace are greater and nobler than those of 
 war. So I am sure you will be glad to hear about one of the 
 great victors of peace, a man greater than Napoleon and 
 Wellington, since all he did was for the good of mankind. 
 
 The man I propose to speak of was a true son of the 
 nineteenth century, for he was born in 1809 and died in 1898, 
 so that he lived from near the beginning to almost the end of 
 the century. No doubt many of you have heard his name, 
 which was William Ewart Gladstone. It is one of the most 
 famous names of the century. 
 
 57 
 
58 THE CHAMPION OF RIGHT 
 
 Gladstone was born in Liverpool, the greatest seaport of 
 England. His father was a merchant in that city, and sent 
 his son to the great English schools of Eton and Oxford, where 
 he soon became noted for his eloquence. None of the other 
 boys of the school could talk like young Gladstone. Before he 
 left college he had won fame as an orator, and made a ^\'on- 
 derful speech, which many came to hear. One of his hearers, 
 a deacon in the church, said to a friend, " I have just heard 
 the best speech I ever heard in my life." Another, who was a 
 bishop, said : " One day that boy will be Prime Minister of 
 England." He judged right ; that was what the boy got to be. 
 
 In later years Gladstone became the greatest orator in 
 England. He moved his hearers as a wind moves the trees. 
 You have seen the boughs bending before a strong gale. That 
 was the way the legislators of England bent before this young 
 man's burning eloquence. His voice was full 
 a on a ^^ ^.^^ music, and rolled through the halls of 
 
 Parliament like the tones of an organ. He 
 was all alive when he spoke ; words flowed from him in a 
 flood ; and when he was excited they came from his lips like 
 flame. By the magic of his voice and the powers of his mind 
 he ruled England for years as few men had ever ruled it be- 
 fore. Though he wore no crown he had the power of a king. 
 
 But this was not the chief greatness of Gladstone. He 
 was strong because he was always on the side of the right. 
 Do you not think with me that the greatest man is the upright 
 man — he who loves honor and truth and justice, who is brave 
 in the battle against wrong, and who works not for his own 
 good but for the good of mankind ? That was the kind of 
 man we had in William Ewart Gladstone. No doubt he made 
 mistakes. All men do that, even the best of them. But he 
 always meant well, always strove for what he thought to be 
 right ; and that is the great thing, after all. 
 
THE CHAMPION OF RIGHT 59 
 
 Shall I tell you some of the things this noble man did? 
 In 1857 he went to Naples, which was then the worst governed 
 country in Europe. People called its ruler, King Bomba. I 
 do not know what they meant by that, but he was a cruel 
 tyrant, who put all the poor patriots he could find into prison 
 and treated them in a brutal way. Gladstone was filled with 
 horror when he was told of their sufferings, and wrote letters 
 about them that seemed on fire with indignation. These let- 
 ters stirred up all Europe and were of the greatest help to the 
 people of Italy when they began to fight for freedom. 
 
 This was not the only time that Gladstone came before 
 the world as a great moral reformer. In 1876 the people of 
 Bulgaria were terribly treated by the Turks. 
 
 T T 1 J r ^1 J J Gladstone a 
 
 Hundreds of them were murdered — men, q^^^i. Reformer 
 women and little children — their homes were 
 burned, their crops were destroyed, and those who had not 
 been killed were left to starve to death. 
 
 When Gladstone heard of this his whole soul was filled 
 with anger and horror. He was an old man then, but he had 
 the spirit of a young one, and he wrote a pamphlet on the 
 " Bulgarian Horror " that rang through the land like the sound 
 of a trumpet, and stirred up all the best feeling in the nation. 
 He did more than this. Russia went to war with the Turks 
 to punish them for their cruelty, and the government of Eng- 
 land wanted to help them against Russia, as it had done in 
 the Crimean War twenty years before. Gladstone stopped 
 that national crime. He made fiery speeches, in Parliament 
 and before great meetings in city and country, and dared the 
 government to go to war to help the murderers. This one 
 man's voice saved England from a shameful wrong. The 
 people were behind Gladstone, and the government did not 
 dare to act. You may see by this what one man can do when 
 he is in arms for the right. 
 
6o THE CHAMPION OF RIGHT 
 
 Though he loved peace, Gladstone was at war all his life. 
 It was not the war of the b "dy, but the war of the mind. He 
 fought for truth and justice, not on the field of battle, but in 
 the halls of Parliament. He was like a Wellington against a 
 Napoleon, or like our own Washington against the British 
 General Howe, as you shall see. 
 
 Gladstone became a member of Parliament in 1833, and 
 
 about the same time another man, named Benjamin Disraeli, 
 
 was elected to Parliament. These two men became the great 
 
 leaders of England. They were on opposite sides, Disraeli at 
 
 the head of the Conservative party, Gladstone 
 
 as one in ^^ ^j^^ head of the Liberals, and behind each of 
 
 Parliament ' 
 
 them was a great army of followers in Parlia- 
 ment and in the country. They were like two powerful 
 generals in the field, and for the remainder of their lives they 
 fought their battle for good or evil, and England followed 
 the victor in the fray. 
 
 Have any of my young readers ever read Milton's 
 famous poem of " Paradise Lost," or that part of it which tells 
 of the great battle in Heaven, where Christ led the army of 
 good angels and Satan the army of evil spirits ? This is some- 
 thing like the battle in the English Parliament. I do not wish 
 to say that England is anything like Heaven, or that Glad- 
 stone and Disraeli were like Christ and Satan. But what I 
 do mean to say is that Gladstone always fought for the right 
 and Disraeli often fought for the wrong. One of them led 
 the army of light and the other the army of darkness, and 
 the cause of good or of evil rose or fell as one or the other 
 won in the great fight. 
 
 I am not sure but ihis is too strong a way of speaking. 
 But at least it may be said, that if there was a right and a wrong 
 side of a question, you would always find Gladstone on the 
 right, and usually find Disraeli on the wrong side. For an 
 
THE CHAMPION OF RIGHT 6i 
 
 example, would you not say that the people have a right to 
 vote ? I am sure, as Americans, you would. But at that 
 time most of the people in England could not vote, and had 
 no one to represent or act for them in Parliament. Gladstone 
 did not approve of this. He said it was not just, and brought 
 in a Reform bill that gave the right to vote to 400,000 more 
 of the people. Disraeli took the other side and fought against 
 Reform. He won, and Gladstone was beaten. 
 
 But Gladstone looked beyond the present, and said to 
 his enemies : ''You cannot fight against the future. Time is 
 on our side. The great social forces are against you, and 
 the banner which we carry in this fight, though it may droop 
 over our sinking heads, will soon again float in 
 
 ,1 rTT juu Ji. The Conflict of 
 
 the eyes 01 Heaven and be borne onward to ^^^ ^ . ^^.^ 
 victory." He was right. The people rose and 
 cried out for justice, and no one dared oppose them. The 
 next year Disraeli himself was forced to bring in a Reform 
 Bill which gave the people all that Gladstone had asked for. 
 He passed the bill, but Gladstone got the glory. 
 
 Another of the great battles of Gladstone was for the 
 rights of Ireland. That island, you know, belongs to Eng- 
 land. It is a part of the British kingdom. But for a long 
 time the people have been very badly treated. I cannot tell 
 you all the ways in which they had been robbed of their 
 rights; but they were a poor, half-starved people, thousands of 
 them were driven from their homes because they could not 
 raise enough on their little farms to pay the rent, and millions 
 of them had to go to America or other far-off countries for a 
 chance to live. 
 
 Gladstone fought for Ireland like a soldier of the Cross. 
 He said the people of that country had a right to a Parlia- 
 ment of their own, where they might make laws for them- 
 selves. This is what is called Home Rule. He brought in 
 
62 THE CHAMPION OF RIGHT 
 
 a bill for Home Rule in 1886, but it was defeated, and for a 
 time things were worse in Ireland than before. 
 
 But the "Grand Old Man," as people began to call 
 Gladstone, waited. In 1892 he became Prime Minister again, 
 for the fourth time in his life. He was now a very old man, 
 but he was still strong for the right, and he made as noble 
 speeches as ever he had done in his life. Triumph came to 
 the good old soldier. The Home Rule Bill was passed. At 
 the end of his life the people's champion had won his greatest 
 victory. 
 
 You must not think from this that Ireland won the right 
 
 to rule itself The British Parliament, like our own Congress, 
 
 is made up of two bodies ; the House of Commons, which is 
 
 something like our House of Representatives ; 
 
 P, ^. ' * and the House of Lords, which answers to our 
 
 Parliament ' 
 
 Senate, though its members are not voted for, 
 but are born to their seats. It is made up of the lords of the 
 nation. 
 
 It was in the House of Commons that the Home Rule 
 Bill was passed. It was defeated in the House of Lords. 
 Gladstone did not live to bring it up again. He was so feeble 
 that he had to leave Parliament, and in 1898 he died. His 
 great opponent, Benjamin Disraeli, had died in 1881. Queen 
 Victoria had made Disraeli an earl. She wanted to do the 
 same to Gladstone, but he would not accept a title. He 
 thought that his plain name was the highest title he could 
 have. All Americans will agree with him in this, for we do 
 not think much of titles, and we do think a great deal of a 
 noble name. 
 
 What more shall I tell you about Gladstone? Would 
 you like to hear what Bishop Wilberforce said of him in 1868, 
 when he was made Prime Minister for the first time ? He 
 wrote: "Gladstone as ever great, earnest, and honest; as 
 
THE CHAMPION OF RIGH7 63 
 
 unlike the tricky Disraeli as possible. He is so delightfully 
 true and the same ; just as full of interest in every good thing 
 of every kind." That will do for his epitaph. 
 
 I might go on and speak of the brave and good men who 
 helped Gladstone in his long career, but I can only give you 
 the names of one or two of them. There was Richard Cob- 
 den, who fought for years against the Corn Laws of England, 
 which made food very dear to the people, and 
 who was the father of Free Trade. Gladstone ,,^/! ..^'" 
 
 Noble Men 
 
 loved and admired this man. 
 
 " I do not know," he said, " that there is in any period a 
 man whose public career and life were nobler and more admi- 
 rable. Of course, I except Washington. Washington, to 
 my mind, is the purest figure in history." 
 
 Is it not pleasant to find an Englishman saying this? 
 We are so proud of Washington, that we feel happy to find 
 the great men of other nations praising him. 
 
 There was another noble figure, the great and good John 
 Bright, who stood by Gladstone's side during the most of his 
 life. He, too, was a famous orator. Men called him " the 
 tribune of the people," for he was always on the people's side, 
 always fighting for liberty and reform. He was a warm friend 
 of Ireland, and no man could surpass him in his power of 
 reaching the heart of the people by his noble eloquence. Like 
 brothers were these great men, Gladstone and Bright ; they 
 lived and worked for good together, and went to the grave 
 not far apart. Is this enough to say about the "Tribune of 
 the People?" No, indeed; John Bright played too great a 
 part in the public life of England to be dealt with in these 
 few words. 
 
 John Bright was born in 181 1. two years after his noble 
 friend and helper in the cause of reform. He came from a 
 Quaker family, and was all his life a member of the Society 
 
64 THE CHAMPION OF RIGHT 
 
 of Friends, and in all things a good and earnest man. There 
 was no reform he did not advocate, and with a fine oratory 
 which few could surpass. He was a bright and fluent speaker, 
 and when any just cause was before the country no man could 
 have worked more incessantly than he. He seemed born to 
 influence and control people. 
 
 The repeal of the Corn Laws was the first great public 
 
 duty in which he took part. He was a warm friend of Richard 
 
 Cobden, and worked by his side for years to win cheap bread 
 
 for the people. His speeches in this cause were fervent and 
 
 eloquent, and he richly deserved his title of the 
 
 John Bright and ,, i ' 4. -u " 
 
 ^. ^ , " people s tribune. 
 
 the Corn Laws ^ ^ 
 
 This was only one of the many reforms for 
 which he w^orked with all his heart and soul. He was a 
 member of the Peace Society, and when the Crimean War 
 broke out he opposed it warmly and eloquently. He looked 
 on all war as shameful, and war in support of the Turks 
 seemed to him a crime of the nation. When the Civil War 
 came in the United States, the cause of the North was his 
 cause, although it cut off the supply of cotton from the mills 
 of England and cost him much money in his business as a 
 cotton manufacturer. But the freedom of the slave was more 
 to him than the filling of his purse. 
 
 John Bright' s best and strongest work was done in 1866, 
 in the great struggle to give the power of voting to the com- 
 mon people. He was the warm supporter of Gladstone in this 
 righteous cause, and made speeches which roused vast audi- 
 ences to the highest enthusiasm. 
 
 That was John Bright's last great labor, though he con- 
 tinued to work for the cause of right and humanity till the end 
 of his life. He sank to rest in March, 1889, ^^^^^ ^ ^^^^ ^f the 
 greatest purity, honor, and warm devotion to the good of 
 mankind. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Garibaldi, the Hero of Italy 
 
 F you look on the map of Europe and let your eye 
 go down to the south of it, you will see a narrow 
 stretch of land which runs far down into the 
 Mediterranean Sea, and spreads out at its end 
 like a great foot. It has been called "the boot," 
 and it does look much like one ; you can easily make out the 
 foot and the leg. This is the kingdom of Italy, one of the 
 most famous countries that the history of old times tells us 
 about. Near its centre you will notice the city of Rome, In 
 ancient times this was the largest and most famous city in the 
 world, and the capital of a vast empire that spread far over 
 Europe, Asia and Africa. 
 
 This was nearly two thousand years ago. Afterwards 
 the mighty empire of Rome was torn to pieces, as you might 
 tear up the map you have just been looking at, and the great 
 city was plundered by wild barbarians, and Italy became like 
 a dead animal that is fouefht for by savae^e 
 
 .^ ^ & Italy Broken Up 
 
 dogs. It was divided up into many separate 
 
 kingdoms and dukedoms, and was long a battle-ground for 
 
 Germany, France and Spain. Napoleon drove out its enemies 
 
 for a time, but after his fall they came marching back, and 
 
 long before the middle of the nineteenth century it was all 
 
 broken up again, much of it being held by the empire of 
 
 Austria. 
 
 The people of Italy did not like this at all. I do not 
 think any of you would have liked it if you had been born 
 
 65 
 
66 GARIBALDI, THE HERO OF ITAL Y 
 
 there. When they thought how great and glorious their coun- 
 try had once been, it hurt them to see it cut up into little bits, 
 as it were, and some of the best parts of it held by foreign 
 rulers. They wanted their country free and they wanted it 
 united. I am sure you will all feel for them, for the time was 
 when our own country was not free and united, and there is 
 nothing we are now prouder of than to have it a free and 
 great Union. 
 
 There were many brave patriots in Italy, and for years 
 they kept stirring up the people against their oppressors. But 
 they were put down again and again, and those who were 
 taken prisoners were treated with great cruelty. At length 
 there came the man who was to be the liberator of Italy, the 
 brave Garibaldi, the greatest and noblest of the patriots of that 
 ancient land. I am sure you will be glad to read the story 
 of this famous soldier, who won liberty and unity for his 
 native soil. 
 
 Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in the city of Nice, a beau- 
 tiful and delightful place on the shore of the Mediterranean. 
 It was then a city of Italy, though it has since that time been 
 given to France. Garibaldi's parents were 
 
 Garibaldi as a j i c ^ r ,\ i 
 
 ^ .J ^ poor,ana as he was very lond of the sea he 
 
 went out on a ship when he was a mere boy, 
 and became quite a sailor before he was grown up. When he 
 was twenty-five years old he joined the patriots who were 
 fighting for the freedom of Italy. But they were defeated 
 and he had to flee for his life. 
 
 For fourteen years after that the brave young man wan- 
 dered about the world seeking his fortune. First he went to 
 Marseilles in France. There he found many of the people 
 sick with cholera. The nurses had all fled in fear from the 
 hospital, but like a true soldier he went there and nursed the 
 sick. Then he went to Africa to find work for a soldier, and 
 
GARIBALDI, THE HERO OF ITALY 07 
 
 after that to South America. Here there was plenty of fight- 
 ing going on, and Garibaldi had enough of it to do. In 1848 
 he came back to Italy. Fighting was going on there. The 
 people had risen and seized the city of Rome, and a French 
 army was marching to drive them out. Garibaldi joined them 
 and helped them to fight against the French. 
 
 Poor patriots ! There was a handful against an army. 
 They had to flee for their lives, and were pursued wherever 
 they went by the soldiers. If Garibaldi had been a wild beast 
 he could not have been hunted more savagely. His poor wife, 
 who had come with him from South America, could not bear 
 the terrors and hardships of the flight, and she sank and died 
 by his side. That was a sad wound to his heart, 
 for he loved her dearly, and when he lost her he „f * f .' 
 
 ■^ ' Wanderings 
 
 lost all he loved in the world, except his country. 
 
 It was a good thing for Italy that the French and Aus- 
 trians did not capture Garibaldi, for he was to do noble work 
 for his country still. After many dangers he got safely out of 
 the country and began his old life of wandering. This time 
 he went to the United States. He had to make his living 
 there, and he became a soap and candle maker on Staten 
 Island, near the city of New York. This was not the kind of 
 work to suit a man like Garibaldi, and the next we hear of 
 him he was a sailor on the Pacific Ocean, seeking adventure 
 in his old fashion. But he never forgot Italy. He knew all 
 that was going on there, but ten years passed before he was 
 ready to go back. 
 
 In 1859 a war began between the French and the Aus- 
 trians, and, as in Napoleon's time, some fierce battles were 
 fought in Italy. As soon as he heard of this Garibaldi made 
 haste home. He was given the rank of major-general and 
 was told to raise a body of volunteers, so he went to his old 
 friends, the mountaineers, and soon had a regiment of brave 
 
68 GARIBALDI, THE HERO OF ITAL Y 
 
 and hardy men whom he called the " Hunters of the Alps.'* 
 It was not the animals of the mountains but the Austrian sol- 
 diers that these bold fellows hunted, and wherever they met 
 these enemies of their country they won victories. You may 
 be sure they did their part in driving the invaders from their 
 native land. 
 
 Everywhere the French and the Italians were successful 
 and the Austrians were defeated. At last Italy was free from 
 them, and I can tell you there was a lively time among the 
 rulers of the little kingdoms whom the Austrian army had 
 kept on their thrones. They had ill-treated the people, and 
 now they ran away in a panic, for fear the people 
 a y ree would scrve them the same way. A treaty was 
 
 From Austria -^ -' 
 
 made between the French and the Austrians 
 which said that these small kings or grand dukes might come 
 back if the people would permit. But the people said nay to 
 that. They had seen all they wanted of them. So the little 
 states were united to the large state of Sardinia, and that 
 much was done for the unity of Italy. 
 
 Do you think this was enough for Garibaldi ? I fancy 
 not. Much of Italy was still in the hands of tyrants, and he 
 would not be satisfied till it was free. In the south was the 
 powerful kingdom of Naples and Sicily, which had long been 
 governed by cruel tyrants, who had treated the patriots in the 
 most shameful manner. But with all their cruelty and all their 
 ^ soldiers they could not put them down. Secret societies of 
 patriots met in all parts of the country, and plots for freedom 
 were made on all sides. Early in i860 some of the people 
 in the cities of Messina and Palermo rose in rebellion, and 
 fighting with the troops began. 
 
 This gave Garibaldi the chance he was waiting for. As 
 soon as he heard that the people were in arms he gathered a 
 body of volunteers, about one thousand in all, and set sail for 
 
GARIBALDI, THE HERO OF ITAL V 69 
 
 the island of Sicily. A thousand men was not much against 
 the great army of the king of Naples, which was 150,000 
 strong ; but Garibaldi knew that he would soon have help 
 from the Sicilian patriots. As soon as he had landed and 
 reached the mountains bold men, with rifles in their hands, 
 flocked to his ranks. In three days he had 4,000 men. 
 Then he sent word through the island that he had come to be 
 the dictator of Sicily in the name of Victor Emanuel, the king 
 of Sardinia. 
 
 Soon the patriot army met the soldiers of Naples, fighting 
 took place, and the patriots were victorious. The soldiers 
 were stronger in numbers and better posted, but they could 
 not hold out against men who were fighting for liberty. 
 Onward marched Garibaldi, and as he advanced he lit 
 beacon-fires on the hills, to warn the people that 
 their defenders were coming". In a few days , Z, f ^^^ 
 
 o -'of Palermo 
 
 more he came within sight of the city of 
 Palermo, the capital of the island. The people were waiting 
 for him ; they had seen his signal fires on the hilltops. When 
 he appeared before the gates of the town they rose in the 
 streets, built barricades, and fought the troops. In a few 
 hours half the city was in his hands. 
 
 Before more could be done a strong army from Naples 
 made its appearance, and began to bombard the city, pouring 
 in shot and shell until it was nearly all in ruins. But Gari- 
 baldi and his men held on. Shot and shell could not drive 
 them out. At length the troops from Naples gave up the 
 fight and left the ruined city in patriot hands. Garibaldi had 
 held his own with 5000 men against an army of 25,000. That 
 was a great thing to do, and when the king of Naples heard 
 of it he was filled with fear. He knew that his people hated 
 him and would be glad to help drive him from the throne, 
 
 and in all haste he offered them a liberal government. He 
 
 5 
 
70 GARIBALDI, THE HERO OF ITALY 
 
 was "too late," the people said ; they knew him too well to 
 trust him. 
 
 Garibaldi lost no time. From Palermo he marched north 
 against the large city of Messina, and in a week's time this, 
 too, was in his hands. When the news spread over Europe 
 everybody was astonished, and looked on Garibaldi as a great 
 soldier. In six weeks' time, with a few thousand men, he had 
 made himself master of the large island of Sicily. What 
 would he do next ? men asked. They did not have long to 
 wait. He crossed from the island to the mainland and was 
 on the soil of Naples itself Now the tyrant on the throne 
 had good cause to tremble. 
 
 Into the land he marched with his handful of men, and 
 
 everything gave way before him. The soldiers of the king 
 
 were Italians, and most of them had no heart to fight against 
 
 the man who had come to bring them liberty. 
 
 Garibaldi in ^^- ■,.-, ^ .~^, 
 
 Na les progress was like a parade. I here was no 
 
 resistance. The soldiers seemed to melt away 
 before him. Town after town opened its gates. His name 
 acted like magic on the people. As he went towards the city 
 of Naples the king, who trembled at his coming, took to 
 flight, but of his large army only 4,000 men followed him 
 from the city. The next day Garibaldi entered the capital 
 of the kingdom, and the population welcomed him with 
 shouts and cheers, and every show of gladness and delight 
 They had waited long for liberty, and Garibaldi brought it 
 to them. 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, the King of Sardinia, knew well what 
 Garibaldi was about. The great patriot was fighting for an 
 united Italy, and he was to be its king. He had to keep secret, 
 for all Europe was watching him with jealous eyes, but now 
 that Garibaldi was master of the city of Naples he thought it 
 time to act. So a Sardinian army made its way south with the 
 
GARIBALDI, THE HERO OF ITALY 71 
 
 king at its head, and entered the kingdom of Naples, march- 
 ing towards the capital. 
 
 As it came near Garibaldi rode out at the head of his 
 faithful followers, and met Victor Emmanuel, greeting him 
 with the proud title of ** King of Italy." 
 
 The king demanded that he should surrender to him the 
 power he had gained. 
 
 " Sire, I obey," said the noble patriot, and he rode beside 
 the king into the city of Naples, which he delivered into his 
 hands. In four months he had done more for the freedom 
 and union of Italy than had been done for many years. 
 
 Garibaldi had accomplished all he set out to do. He left 
 the rest of the work in the hands of the king, and went to his 
 home in the little island of Caprera, content now to watch 
 events. Francis, the King of Naples, had still victor Emman= 
 an army around him, and more fighting had to uei, King of 
 be done. But in three months more the war '^'^ 
 was at an end, and Victor Emmanuel was King of all Italy, 
 except what were known as the States of the Church, which 
 were ruled over by the Pope, and Venice, which the Austrians 
 still held. 
 
 The patriots were not satisfied. They had much ; they 
 wanted all. They had Naples ; they wanted Rome and Venice. 
 They waited for the king to act, but he did nothing. The 
 French, who had driven Garibaldi and his fellow patriots out of 
 Rome many years before, were still there, and the king did not 
 want to do anything that might bring on a war with France. 
 
 There are two ways to win in the game of politics. One 
 way is by the sword, the other is by the tongue — by what 
 is called diplomacy. Vv^ar may be the shortest way, but 
 diplomacy is the safest and cheapest, so Victor Emmanuel 
 would not let Garibaldi fight, for he had hopes to win without 
 fighting. 
 
72 GARIBALDI, THE HERO OF ITALY 
 
 What he did was to get the French emperor to withdraw 
 his troops from Rome, where he never had any right to put 
 them. They were taken away in 1866, and only the troops 
 of the Pope were left. Yet still the king did not move. The 
 patriots were impatient. Rome, they said, had of old been 
 the capital of Italy, and they would never be satisfied until it 
 was the capital again. They said that it must 
 ^ ^"'f'.^ ? ^'^ and should be theirs. They called on their old 
 
 tal of Italy -^ 
 
 hero. Garibaldi, to lead them again. He was 
 ready. He marched on Rome with a party of volunteers, but 
 he was not in Naples now, the people did not rise to help 
 him, and his small force was soon defeated by the troops of 
 the Pope. He was taken prisoner, and the French soldiers 
 were sent back to Italy. 
 
 But the end was near. Garibaldi had not given his life- 
 work in vain. In 1866 the Austrians gave up Venice, and it 
 became part of the kingdom of Italy.* In 1870, when the 
 French began to fight with the Germans, their soldiers were 
 withdrawn. Now was Victor Emmanuel's chance. He had 
 no fear now of trouble with France. The Pope was asked to 
 give up the government of Rome and the States of the Church. 
 He refused, and the king sent an army against him. For 
 three hours the cannon of the king thundered against the 
 ancient walls of Rome, and then the city was given up and 
 Victor Emmanuel marched in. 
 
 For the first time since ancient days all Italy was united 
 into one kingdom, under one king, and the city of Rome was 
 the capital of the nation. And I think you will say that no 
 man had done more in bringing about the union of Italy than 
 the noble old hero, Guiseppe Garibaldi. 
 
THE BOMBARDMENT °r'';:"''Z°^>l!^'' """T' 'ST^S'^'^'ST" 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Russia, the Colossus of the East 
 
 HREE countries of the world had a wonderful 
 growth during the nineteenth century. Can you 
 tell me what countries these were, or shall I 
 have to tell you ? If you have read this book 
 carefully I am sure you can give me the names 
 of two of them, at least. One of these is the United States, 
 which has spread so widely over the continent of North 
 America. The other is England, whose colonies may be 
 found in all parts of the world. I fancy many of you can 
 give me the name of the third. For those who cannot I will 
 say that it is Russia, the great country of Eastern Europe. 
 
 Russia was a very large country in the year 1800, for it 
 covered more than half of all Europe. It included also the 
 vast country of Siberia, in the north of Asia, which is larger 
 than all Europe. Even then Russia was the 
 largest country on the face of the globe. Since 
 that time it has taken in all of Central Asia, and a large slice 
 of the north of China, and, like a hungry boy at the table, 
 it keeps reaching out for more. It covers now one-sixth of 
 all the land surface of the earth. No doubt, it would like to 
 get hold of the other five-sixths ; but they are not for sale. 
 
 Russia is big, but it is not great. There is a difference, 
 you know, between being big and great. An ox is big, but 
 a man is great. Russia has many millions of people, but 
 they are ignorant and not much better in their habits and 
 
 73 
 
 Russia in 1800 
 
74 RUSSIA, THE COLOSSUS OF THE EAST 
 
 customs than barbarians, and they hardly know what the 
 word freedom means. One man's word there makes the law 
 for over 120,000,000 persons. If it was that way with us we 
 would call ourselves slaves. This is one reason why Russia 
 is only big. A people without liberty and education can 
 never be great. 
 
 Russia is not a very nice place to live in to-day, but it is 
 better than it formerly was. At one time nearly all the farm- 
 ing people were actual slaves, for they had to stay on the land 
 and to work for the lords, whether they wished to or not. 
 Where a man was born there he must live and die ; he could 
 be cruelly punished if he tried to leave. I am 
 Treats its Peo 1 R^^*^ ^^ ^ay that all these slaves were set free 
 about the same time that the slaves in our own 
 country were made freemen. The nineteenth century has 
 done a great deal for human liberty, for it has brought free- 
 dom to all the slaves in Europe and America. 
 
 There is another thing to say about Russia which is not 
 very pleasant. Those who offended the czar or his officers in 
 any way were not locked up in jail, but were sent away to the 
 frozen country of Siberia, w^here they had to work in the 
 mines and were treated very cruelly, so that many of them 
 died. It was not only thieves and murderers that were sent 
 to this dreadful country, but all those who wished Russia to 
 be free and have a government like the other countries of 
 Europe were dealt with in the same heartless manner. It was 
 a cruel system, but it is not so hard now, for the Russians are 
 getting a little ashamed of it, and do not like to be called 
 barbarians by the people of enlightened nations. 
 
 I have called Russia " the Colossus of the East." A 
 Colossus, you should know, means something very large — a 
 giant among men or animals or nations. By the " East" we 
 usually mean Asia. Russia covers not only most of the east 
 
RUSSIA, THE COLOSSUS OF THE EAST 75 
 
 of Europe, but it extends far over Asia, so that it belongs to 
 the East. 
 
 I must tell you something of the history of Asia in the 
 nineteenth century, and show you how it has got to be more 
 of a Colossus than ever. All through the century Russia has 
 played what some of you would call a "grab game." It has 
 taken all the land it could lay hold of, and it is not satisfied 
 yet ; it is all the time wanting more. 
 
 South of Russia lies the country of Turkey, which is in 
 one way like Russia, for its people are ignorant and its ruler 
 is absolute. That is, he can make what laws he pleases and 
 he can be as much of a tyrant as he cares to. Turkey is not 
 a Christian country. Its people are Moslems, or believers in 
 the religion of Mohammed. But many Christians live there 
 and they have often been treated with great 
 cruelty, for the Moslems hate all religions but .^ Turkey 
 their own. This treatment of the Christians 
 has caused the Russians to go to war with the Turks a 
 number of times. It may be that this is only an excuse, and 
 that all that Russia wants is to add Turkey to its great 
 empire. At any rate the other nations of Europe think so, 
 and they have done all they could to keep the big country 
 from swallowing the little one. 
 
 In 1828 Russia made war on Turkey and forced it to 
 give more liberty to the Christians. The little kingdom of 
 Greece obtained its freedom, and several provinces got what 
 we call home rule. But Russia won nothing for itself, for the 
 other nations stood around like so many bulldogs and made 
 her keep her hands off. 
 
 Another war began in 1853. This time France and Eng- 
 land came to the help of the Turks and there was fierce fight- 
 ing in the Crimea, a peninsula which stretches down into the 
 Black Sea. This became known as the Crimean War. The 
 
76 RUSSIA, THE COLOSSUS OF THE EAS7 
 
 Russians had in the Crimea a large and strong city named 
 Sebastopol, in whose harbor was a powerful fleet. For months 
 and months this city was bombarded, and thousands of cannon 
 balls were thrown into it. At length, one day in vSeptember, 
 1855, the French and English made a desperate attack on its 
 strongest forts. The English were driven back, but the 
 French won their fort, and the Russians were forced to leave 
 the town. That ended the war. Russia had lost all she iought 
 for and the Turks felt proud of their success. 
 
 But the Czar of Russia was soon to have another chance, 
 for the Turks began to ill-treat the Christians again. The tax- 
 gatherers took nearly everything the people had, acting like 
 so many hungry wolves. This caused the brave mountaineers 
 of Bosnia to rebel, and it seemed as if all the Christians might 
 join them and fight for liberty. To stop this 
 
 The Massacre .101^. r-ri ^i- 
 
 . g J ^.^ the bultan 01 i urkey sent his savage troops 
 
 into Bulgaria, one of the Christian provinces, 
 telling them to kill everybody they met. They were very 
 ready to obey orders of this kind, and before they got through 
 thousands of men, women and children were cut down with 
 their swords. Dead bodies lay everywhere and the ground 
 was red with blood. 
 
 When the news of this terrible slaughter spread over 
 Europe the people were filled with horror. Not only men and 
 women, but boys and girls like yourselves, thought that the 
 savage Turks ought to be swept off the earth. Russia declared 
 war and sent an army to punish the sultan for his cruelty. 
 This time England and France did not come to his aid, for 
 the great and good Gladstone wrote a pamphlet on the *' Bul- 
 garian Horrors" which told such a terrible story that the Eng- 
 glish people were furious against the Turks. 
 
 On went the Russian soldiers, over the rugged Balkan 
 mountains, and down to the very gates of Constantinople, the 
 
RUSSIA, THE COLOSSUS OF THE EAST 77 
 
 capital of Turkey. The Turks fought hard, but they were 
 driven back, and this time it looked as if Russia would win 
 what it had so long fought for, and the empire of Turkey 
 would come to an end. 
 
 But the other powers of Europe were as determined as 
 ever that Russia should not have Turkey. They were afraid 
 lest that great country should grow strong enough to conquer 
 all the rest of Europe. England told Russia to stop, and 
 hinted, that if she did not, an army would be 
 
 .,11 . u T- 1 T^u J • J 4- 4- Russia and the 
 
 sent to help the 1 urks. 1 he czar did not want „ 
 
 \ Powers 
 
 another Crimean War, so he drew back and let 
 the powers help make the treaty of peace. Thus it was that 
 Russia got very little for her victories ; but Turkey lost nearly 
 all her Christian provinces, which were taken from her and 
 made free kingdoms. 
 
 Very likely the time will come when Russia will win 
 Constantinople, which she has tried so often to gain. But she 
 did not win it in the nineteenth century, for at the end of that 
 century it was still the capital of the Turkish empire, as it had 
 been for many centuries before. 
 
 If you look back over what you have just read, you will 
 see that Russia got hardly a slice of land from Turkey during 
 the century, in spite of all her efforts. But if we take a look 
 at Asia we shall find a very different state of affairs. In that 
 great continent Russia has been going ahead at a rapid rate. 
 She has run through the continent like a huge railroad 
 engine, smashing everything that came in her way. 
 
 The vast region of Siberia was conquered two centuries 
 before, but in 1858 Russia took possession of that part of 
 Siberia lying along the great Amur River. This belonged to 
 China, but the czar did not take the trouble to ask the Chinese 
 emperor for it, and paid no attention to his complaints. About 
 the same time the Russians went to war with the brave moun- 
 
78 RUSSIA, THE COLOSSUS OF THE EAST 
 
 taineers of the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and 
 the Caspian Seas. Here was a hero named vSchamyl, a brave 
 and daring man, who fought against them for years. But they 
 were too strong. Schamyl was beaten, and the Caucasus 
 became part of Russia. 
 
 South of Siberia Hes a great region inhabited by wander- 
 ing shepherds and herdsmen, who have great flocks of sheep 
 and herds of cattle and horses. It is called the Steppe and is 
 almost a desert. South of that again is the broad region 
 known as Turkestan or Central Asia, part of which is a sandy 
 desert and part is made up of fertile oases, or islands of soil 
 in the sand. This country was inhabited by 
 e eppe an j-j-^jj^,^ q{ fierce and daring" horsemen, w^ho liked 
 
 Turkestan o 
 
 war better than peace, and treated their prisoners 
 in a very savage manner. These were the next countries 
 which Russia conquered. The soldiers of the czar began to 
 fight the Turkomans in 1864, and in 1881 the last fight took 
 place. The whole country was won and has been part of 
 Russia since that date. 
 
 One good thing has come from this war. The Russians 
 are not highly civilized, but the Turkomans were fierce bar- 
 barians, whose chief delight was in robbery and bloodshed. 
 Russia has stopped all this. The Turkomans have been made 
 to go to work and to live by honest labor instead of by theft. 
 And a railroad has been built across their country, and has 
 brought the blessings of commerce to a region that once lived 
 by rapine and war. 
 
 Russia in Europe covers an area of about 2,000,000 
 square miles. In Asia it has an area of over 6,500,000 square 
 miles. The whole empire is nearly as large as the continent 
 of North America. That, you might think, ought to be 
 enough territory for one man to rule over. But it is not ; the 
 czar and his people want more. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Louis Napoleon and His Empire 
 
 APOLEON the Conqueror brought no end of 
 misery to France. But he brought no end of 
 glory, also. And the time came when people 
 forgot the misery and thought only of the glory. 
 What if millions of people had died and millions 
 of homes had been made desolate ! That was past and gone, 
 and it was only remembered that he had made France the 
 lord and master of Europe. So instead of calling him Napo- 
 leon the Monster, as many had done, they called him Napo- 
 leon the Great. That is a weakness which most of us have. 
 We do not admire the man Avho robs and murders in a small 
 way, but we are too apt to worship the man who robs and 
 murders in a large way. I hope all my readers, when they 
 think of war, will think of both things that it brings, the 
 misery as well as the glory. 
 
 Do you ask how we know that the F^rench made so great 
 a hero of Napoleon ? We know it in many ways, and one of 
 the w^ays is this. When another Napoleon came before the 
 people for their votes they went wild over him. 
 And even when he overturned the Q:overnment , .^^^ ^^" 
 
 ^ Little 
 
 and made himself an emperor, the people of 
 France quietly let him do so, and voted for him again by an 
 immense vote. I doubt if they would have done so if it had 
 not been for his name. 
 
 This Napoleon was not a great man. He has often been 
 called Napoleon the Little. But he bore a famous name and 
 
 79 
 
8o LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS EMPIRE 
 
 was a nephew of the mighty conqueror, and that was enough 
 for the people of France, who have always loved glory more 
 than they loved liberty. As I have told you the story of 
 Napoleon the Great, I shall tell that of Napoleon the Little. 
 
 His full name was Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 But this was too long a name for common use, so he was 
 known as Louis Napoleon. He was a son of Louis Bona- 
 parte, a brother of the great Napoleon. His father had once 
 been king of Holland, and he wanted badly to be king or 
 emperor of France. He got to be, too. 
 
 Just here I must say something about the history of 
 
 France after the battle of Waterloo. While Napoleon was 
 
 kept by the English on the far-off island of St. Helena, like a 
 
 war-eagle chained to a rock, one of the old family of kings 
 
 rei«:ned over France. They called him Louis 
 
 Two Old Kings ^ ■' 
 
 XVIII. He was a good-natured old soul, who 
 only asked for a quiet life, and the people were well satisfied 
 with him. But he died, and his brother became king, as 
 Charles X. 
 
 This Charles was a tyrant, or wanted to be. He was a 
 fool, also, as many tyrants are. He tried to take away liberty 
 and free speech from the people. I . fancy he did not know 
 very well what he was about. The French people had no 
 room for tyrants. They had seen enough of them in the past. 
 So as soon as the new laws that were to rob them of their 
 liberty were made public all Paris was up in arms. Mobs 
 paraded the streets. There was fighting with the soldiers 
 and men were killed. The king saw that he had made a 
 blunder and tried to draw back by repealing the new laws. 
 It was too late. The people had enough of him. He did not 
 know but that they might cut off his head as they had cut off 
 the head of Louis XVI., his brother. So he hurried away 
 from France as fast as his trembling old legs would carry him. 
 
BATTLE BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND THE ZULUS, SOUTH AFRICA ^ ^^ ^ 
 
 Of all the natives encountered by the British in AMca, there were none n.oreb^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 hesitate with spear and shield to charge aga.nst the death-deahng rifles of thejl«^^^ J ^ 
 
 valiant blacks, was a man who would have been a hero in ':'\"'^f^° T^", ' •- ; di„„itv of 
 in London streets he compelled the respect of his «"^X -n^^ Jtive land 
 his bearing, and won the right to return and die in his native lana. 
 
LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS EMPIRE 8i 
 
 The people did not make a republic as they might have 
 done, but they put a new king on the throne. His name was 
 Louis Philippe. He was of the old royal family, but he and 
 his father had taken part in the French Revolution, and it 
 was thought that a man who had fought for the liberty of 
 France could be trusted to take care of that liberty. 
 
 If you knew much about kings, you would know that, 
 while many of them are proud, not many of them are wise. 
 They have plenty of tine jewels and rich and showy clothing, 
 but good sense is a better thing than good clothes, and that 
 they do not often have. Louis Philippe wa^ not a bad sort 
 of a man, but he did foolish things which made the people 
 angry, and the time came when they got tired 
 of him. He was made kinsf in 18^0, and the ^. *^"o.o " 
 
 o --> ' t!on of 1848 
 
 people put up with him for eighteen years. 
 Then, one fine day in the year 1848, a great mob filled the 
 streets of Paris, as had often been the case before, and the 
 king was told that he was not wanted any longer. So off 
 went King Louis, post-haste, for England, as King Charles 
 had done before him. The kings of France had got to be 
 very much afraid of the Paris mob. 
 
 What was to be done now ? Here was the great French 
 nation once more without a head. In the past fifty years the 
 people of France had been ruled over by the emperor Napo- 
 leon, by two kings of the old royal family, and by one king 
 of the Revolution. None of these quite suited them, and they 
 had grown tired of kings. They thought they would like to rule 
 themselves, as the people of the United States did ; that is, 
 they decided to have a republic, with a president at its head. 
 
 Louis Napoleon was then in England. He had long 
 wanted to be a king, and he had twice come over to France 
 to ask the people to have him instead of Louis Philippe. 
 Very likely he thought they would run after him, as they had 
 
82 LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS EMPIRE 
 
 after his uncle when he came back from Elba, but instead of 
 that the people kept quiet, and he was taken prisoner and sent 
 to jail for life. He managed somehow to get out of prison 
 and to get back to England, and there he waited till he heard 
 that the French had set their king adrift and were in the 
 market for a president. Then he came back as fast as wind 
 and sails could carry him. He wanted to be something. If 
 he could not be king he was willing to be president. 
 
 No one thought of sending him to prison this time. He 
 was a Bonaparte, and France was fond of that name ; so he 
 was most welcome. He was elected to the French Congress, 
 and soon offered himself for President. Now the magic of 
 Louis Napoleon ^^^^ name came to his help. There were better 
 Elected Presi- and wiser men in France, plenty of them, but 
 **^"* they were not Bonapartes, and when the elec- 
 
 tion came off he received more than five and a half millions 
 of votes, while General Cavaignac, the other candidate, 
 received only one and a half millions. So Louis Napoleon 
 was made president for four years. 
 
 It is a good thing to buy a dove, but it is a bad thing to 
 buy a hawk. You can trust your dove, but you cannot trust 
 your hawk. The French people had bought a hawk when 
 they chose Louis Napoleon for president. Perhaps I had bet- 
 ter say they had bought a vulture. At any rate, they were 
 quickly to learn that they had made a grand mistake. 
 
 The new president soon showed that he was ambitious. 
 He began to fight with the Assembly — the Congress of France 
 — and to do things which he had no right to, under the laws. 
 But that did not satisfy him. Fie remembered that his uncle. 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, had made himself Emperor, and he 
 wanted to do the same thing. It was a dangerous business, 
 but a man who wants to steal a government has got to run 
 some risk. 
 
LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS EMPIRE 83 
 
 What he did was to get the army on his side, for he knew 
 that he might need to use force to accompHsh his purposes. 
 He tried to get on the right side of the people, also, by pre- 
 tending to be their friend, and making them believe that the 
 Assembly was against them. When he had worked in this 
 way for a year or two he was ready to make another move. 
 
 The 2d of December was a day that jiieant much to the 
 French. On that day, in 1804, the first Napoleon had been 
 crowned emperor, and on that same day in 1805 he had won 
 the great victory of Austerlitz. Louis Napoleon chose that 
 day in 1851 to play the traitor to his country. He had his 
 soldi«rs ready, and suddenly sent them to seize 
 all the members of the Assembly whom he was ^ ■ '^ ^^^ ^ 
 
 J a Crime 
 
 afraid of, and lock them up in prison. Then, 
 when the people rose in the streets to defend their liberties, 
 he made his soldiers fire on them and shoot them down in 
 heaps. The liberty of France went out that day in blood- 
 shed and murder. 
 
 Victor Hugo, the great French author, has told all about 
 this in a book, which he called "The History of a Crime." 
 That was a good name for it, for murder is the worst of 
 crimes. Suppose one of our presidents should try the same 
 thing, what would we call it ? We would want some stronger 
 word than crime. 
 
 I have told you how Louis Napoleon tried to get on the 
 right side of the people. But he was afraid to ask them to 
 make him emperor till he had given them more time to think 
 about it. vSo he offered them a new constitution which made 
 him president for ten years and gave him as much power as 
 a king. He was a Bonaparte, "the nephew of his uncle" ; 
 he had done some good things for the people. This was 
 enough ; they gave the new constitution a majority of more 
 than seven million votes. 
 
84 LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS EMPIRE 
 
 The new president-king let another year pass by, in 
 which he pretended to be very noble and generous and pious 
 and a good friend of the people, doing all he could in the way 
 of public works. Then he asked them to vote for him as 
 emperor. They did as he wished. If one can believe the 
 returns nearly eight million people voted for him. I doubt 
 if we can quite believe those returns. If you have read much 
 about politics you must know what election returns often 
 mean in our large cities. They mean a little truth and a good 
 deal of fraud and falsehood. People said that the vote for 
 Louis Napoleon was a lie of the largest size. But who was 
 to call it in question ? He had the arn>y on 
 
 A New Emperor i • -i i •, u j i ^.i i 
 
 . ^ his side, and it was remembered how the people 
 
 in France ' i r 
 
 had been shot down in Paris. It was safest to 
 throw their hats in the air and hurrah for the Emperor Napo- 
 leon III. He called himself Napoleon the Third, for the first 
 Napoleon had a son whom people called Napoleon the Sec- 
 ond, though he never came to the throne. 
 
 Now that Louis Napoleon was emperor, what did he do? 
 Well, not much to boast of. He put on royal airs, and wore 
 showy clothes, and strutted about in a kingly fashion, and 
 told the Assembly what laws he wanted them to pass, and 
 thought himself of very great importance indeed ; but I do 
 not believe he was any happier than he had been as president, 
 and who knows but the ghosts of those he had murdered to 
 make himself emperor came to haunt him at night ? 
 
 The monarchs of Europe were a little scared. They did 
 not forget the trouble they had had with Napoleon I., and the 
 very name of Napoleon was enough to frighten them. But 
 the new emperor said "the Empire is peace," and he kept 
 quiet so long that they began to believe him. He spent much 
 of his time in trying to make Paris finer. He had new streets 
 laid out and bridges built and splendid buildings put up, and 
 
LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS EMPIRE 85 
 
 he opened a great World's Fair, the finest that had been seen 
 up to that time. And he did all he could to help trade and 
 industry in France, and make the people happy and pros- 
 perous ; so that they began to forget that he had stolen the 
 throne, and to think him a very fair sort of king. 
 
 " The Empire is peace " is a pretty motto, but it did not 
 wear well. The Empire of Napoleon III. was founded on the 
 army. The soldiers had put him on the throne and kept him 
 there, and he was obliged to think of the army as well as the 
 people. Now the motto of an army is, '* The Empire is War." 
 Soldiers and officers want to win glory in battle; and very 
 likely many of the people began to think that a_ 
 Napoleon who did no fighting was not of much ^^^ "^^' 
 account. They remembered that his uncle did 
 hardly anything else than fight. I think the new emperor 
 himself wanted a little of that sort of glory that comes from 
 war. Victory on the battle-field seems to give a man so 
 much more importance, and he was a little jealous of the 
 fame of his uncle. 
 
 At any rate he gave his soldiers all the fighting he could 
 find for them. Before he got to be emperor he sent a number 
 of them to Rome and kept them there for years, where they 
 helped to keep the people of Italy from winning their liberty. 
 Then in 1854 he sent a large army to Turkey, where they 
 aided the English and the Turks in the Crimean War. They 
 won some glory there, for it was they who took the fort at 
 Sebastopol when the English were driven back, and who 
 forced the Russians to give up that strong city. 
 
 But all this did not satisfy the emperor. He could not 
 forget that his warlike uncle had led his own armies to vic- 
 tory, and that his first battles had been in Italy against the 
 Austrians. There was a fine chance for him to try and win 
 •glory for himself, for the Austrians were again in Italy and 
 
86 LOUIS NAPOLEON AND ///S EMPIRE 
 
 were making trouble there. They held the rich kingdom of 
 Lombardy, and in 1859 they went to war with Sardinia and 
 hoped to get that too. At once Napoleon sent an army into 
 Italy to help the king of Sardinia, and it was not long before 
 he was there himself. He had an " order of the day" read to 
 them, in which he told them of what their fathers had done in 
 Italy under the great Napoleon, and asked them to do as 
 well for him. This filled the army with pride and courage. 
 
 I do not intend to tell you all about the war. But I must 
 say that Louis Napoleon did not show himself much of a sol- 
 dier. He made more military blunders in a week than his 
 uncle had made in all his life. But, by good luck for him, 
 the Austrians made worse blunders still, and so 
 agen a an j^^ \\ow the p^rcat battle of Mag^enta. Not Ions: 
 
 afterwards the two armies came together again 
 and the French won another great victory, known as Sol- 
 ferino. That was enough for Austria. Peace was made and 
 Lombardy was given up to Italy. 
 
 Many people blamed Napoleon for giving up the war so 
 soon. But he knew what he was about. He had sense enough 
 to know that he was not made for a general, and that he had 
 better keep the glory he had won and not risk it all by trying 
 to win more. So he came home feeling very grand, while 
 the French people looked upon him as a great conqueror. 
 Nobody called him Napoleon the Little just then. 
 
 It seemed as if his success in Italy had put false notions 
 into Napoleon's head, for he began to look about him for some 
 other place where his soldiers could win fame for France. 
 He found a very bad place, as it turned out. The people of 
 the United States were at that time busy with their great Civil 
 War, and he thought this would be a good time to meddle in 
 American affairs. So he stirred up some sort of a quarrel 
 with Mexico, and sent an army there. This very soon defeated 
 
LOUIS NAPOLEON AND HIS EMPIRE 87 
 
 the Mexican soldiers, and the government was overturned 
 and an empire formed. A member of the royal family of Aus- 
 tria, named Maximilian, was sent out to act as emperor, and 
 once more Napoleon III. felt grand. 
 
 But he had made a great blunder. He knew all about 
 the "Monroe Doctrine" of the United States Government, 
 which says very plainly that this country will not let any of 
 the nations of Europe take possession of any part of America, 
 and tells them plainly to keep out. He fancied, however, that 
 the United States was going to be broken to 
 
 1 1 1 1 r i 1 The French in 
 
 pieces and would be ot no account any longer, jyiexico 
 That is the big mistake he made. 
 
 The people of this country went on fighting till their war 
 was over, and then they told Napoleon to take his army out 
 of Mexico very quick or he would find himself in trouble. He 
 obeyed orders ; he knew he had to get out or get whipped. 
 As soon as they were gone the people of Mexico went to war 
 with Maximilian, took him prisoner, and shot him. That was 
 the end of the empire which Louis Napoleon founded in Mex- 
 ico, and since then the nations of Europe have let America 
 alone. They do not care to wake up the great watch-dog of 
 the American continent. 
 
 The next thing Napoleon did was a greater mistake still. 
 He grew so proud of his army that he fancied it could fight 
 any nation in Europe, so he picked a quarrel with the king of 
 Prussia, and went to war with him. I shall not tell you about 
 this war here. I must hold it back for a chapter further on. 
 All I need say at this place is, that the French emperor soon 
 found that he had made a fatal mistake, and that his army 
 was no match for that of King William of Prussia. He was 
 beaten in every battle, his armies were captured, his cities 
 were taken, and he was made a prisoner of war, which ended 
 his career. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 England and Her CoJonies 
 
 HE people of England used to make the proud 
 boast that " Britannia rules the waves ! " They 
 quit saying so after the War of 1812, when the 
 few American ships made such havoc in the great 
 British fleet. They saw that another nation had 
 come which had something to say about who should rule 
 the waves. 
 
 Other British sayings are that the morning gun of Eng- 
 land is heard round the world, and that the sun never sets 
 upon English soil. What is said about the morning gun is 
 poetry, but what is said about the sun is truth. For the colo- 
 nies of Great Britain stretch so far around the earth that when 
 it is night over some of them the sun is shining on others. 
 To-day, the greatness of England is largely due to her colo- 
 nies ; so it seems well that you should know 
 pan o es somcthinp" about them. The history of colonies 
 
 Her Colonies o -^ 
 
 in the nineteenth century is a very interesting 
 one. When that century began Spain had the greatest colo- 
 nies on the earth. It held nearly all of South America except 
 Brazil, and all of North America except the United States 
 and Canada. And it held two-thirds of what is now the 
 United States. At the end of thf^ century it had lost all this 
 great dominion, and all its islands in the East and West 
 Indies. Portugal had lost the great empire of Brazil. 
 
 Now let us go back to England and her colonies. You 
 know how she once owned the country which is now the 
 
*l i'O' 
 
 KING EDWARD VII TAKING THE OATH 
 
ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES 89 
 
 United States, and how she lost it by trying to oppress its 
 people. But you may not know that this is the only colony 
 England ever lost. She was taught a lesson by the brave 
 soldiers of the American Revolution which she did not forget, 
 and she never afterwards tried to act the tyrant to her colonies. 
 England does not want any more Revolutions, so she is wise 
 enough to let the people of her colonies govern themselves. 
 
 One of the greatest of the English colonies is the next- 
 door neighbor of the United States, the great country we call 
 Canada. There are people who think that Canada ought to 
 belong to the United States, and armies were sent there 
 during the Revolution and the War of 181 2. 
 But they did not succeed, and Canada still be- ^ ^ ^^^ ^^ 
 
 J ' Canada 
 
 longs to Great Britain. It does not object to 
 belong to that country ; it is rather proud of it than otherwise, 
 for the Canadians are very loyal to their mother-country ; in 
 the South African war, some of the best and bravest soldiers 
 who fought the Boers came from the great colony of Canada. 
 
 I cannot say, indeed, that all the people of that coun- 
 try love England. You must remember that Canada once 
 belonged to France, and that many of its people have come 
 down from the old French colonists. These have never for- 
 gotten that France is their mother-land, and many of them 
 do not love England enough even to learn its language, so 
 that in parts of Canada you might think you were in France. 
 
 Have you any idea how large a country. Canada is ? You 
 would hardly think that it is larger than the United States, 
 yet such is the fact. Larger in square miles, I mean, for, 
 though it was settled before the United States, it has only 
 about 5,000,000 people. Why is this ? Well, there is one 
 word for it — cold. Much of Canada is a very cold country, 
 the greater part of it being so chilly and frozen that only wild 
 Indians and daring fur-hunters care to live in it. To be sure, 
 
90 ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES 
 
 there is one part of that cold region where many people live 
 and where a large city has sprung up. This is along the Klon- 
 dike River, w^here gold was found a few years ago. When 
 gold is to be had, people do not stop to think of cold or any 
 other evil. But when the yellow metal is all dug up they will 
 fly away, like birds, to w^armer climes. 
 
 But further south and along the Great Lakes Canada is 
 full of people, hardy, industrious, energetic men and women, 
 as pushing and enterprising as the people of the United States. 
 It is a great farming country, and fine crops of w^heat and 
 other grains are raised. Then the woods are full of splendid 
 timber, and the w^aters are crowded with fine 
 ana a ^^-^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ \mq[\ say that Canada has a 
 
 great future before it. Though it is a colony 
 of Great Britain, it is almost as free as the United States. 
 It has its own government and makes its own law^s, and 
 England's idea of governing Canada is to let it alone. 
 The people there w^ould not bear oppression for a day, and 
 the governing powers in England know that very well. 
 
 Another important colony of England is the immense 
 island of Australia, which is three-fourths as large as all 
 Europe. For a long time England kept this island as a place 
 to send its convicts to, and its people were made up of crimi- 
 nals of many kinds. But in 1851 gold was found there, three 
 years after it was found in California. If you ask your fathers, 
 they can tell you how excited the people were when they heard 
 that the yellow metal w^as in California for any one to dig up, 
 and how they hurried there in thousands. They rushed to 
 Australia in the same way, and were soon digging away like 
 madmen, and talking about nothing else but gold dust and 
 cradles and washers. 
 
 There is one thing about Australia which I trust you will 
 like to hear. England got that great island without fighting. 
 
ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES 91 
 
 and it is the only colony she ever got in that way. The 
 Australians were low savages who dwelt in the desert where 
 white men could not live, so in that country there has never 
 been a war. It is the only large country on the earth of 
 which that can be said. 
 
 I cannot say that of New Zealand, a fine country which 
 is south of Australia, and which England has held as a colony 
 since 1840. This is a group of much smaller islands, which 
 were inhabited by a far braver people, the 
 Maoris, who fought for their homes as fiercely ^^^,^15 
 as the Indians did in America. War went 
 on there for about twenty-five years. At the end of that time 
 there were not many Maoris left to fight, and since 1870 the 
 English there have been at peace. 
 
 Gold had a good deal to do with the peopling of Australia. 
 But gold was not all, for great flocks of sheep were raised, 
 and there were other valuable products. These have taken so 
 many people to Australia that it has now more than 3,000,000 
 inhabitants and several large cities. There are more than 
 300,000 people in Melbourne and 250,000 in Sydney. 
 
 Now we must take a look at the greatest of the English 
 colonies, India or Hindustan, one of the southern peninsulas of 
 Asia extending into the Indian Ocean. It is a very rich and 
 fertile country, and has the greatest population of any country 
 on the globe except China, its people numbering nearly 
 300,000,000. Just think of that vast multitude of human 
 beings, and then look at the little speck of land known as 
 England, and try to fancy this little country governing that 
 great one. It is like a dwarf governing a giant ! But the 
 people of England have far more energy and spirit than the 
 people of India, and they know far more about the arts of 
 war and of government ; so step by step they have conquered 
 all India and rule it as their own. 
 
92 ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES 
 
 This began about one hundred and fifty years ago, when 
 a brave EngHshman named Robert Clive, with about looo 
 British soldiers, defeated about 70,000 of the natives. Then, 
 near the opening of the nineteenth century, the Marquis of 
 Wellesley — who afterwards became Lord WelHngton and 
 won the battle of Waterloo — gained many victories in India, 
 and the British powder spread wider and wider. All through 
 the nineteenth century the British kept up the struggle, now 
 winning one victory, now another, until nearly all the Indian 
 rulers had to submit to them. But they did not do this with- 
 out much hard fighting and some dreadful scenes. I shall 
 have to tell you about some of these. 
 
 North of India lies a country named Afghanistan, or land 
 of the Afghans, and about 1837 the British began to meddle 
 with this region. In 1839 they sent a number of soldiers 
 to Cabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and left 
 Peo le^ ^" them in possession of that city. But you must 
 
 know that the Afghans are a very fierce and 
 brave people, who love their liberty, and they did not intend 
 to have these strangers as masters of their country if they could 
 help it. They gave the British so much trouble that in 1842 
 the soldiers had to leave Cabul and begin a retreat to India. 
 
 I do not think you ever read of quite so terrible a retreat 
 as that was. There were 16,000 of the British, of whom only 
 4000 were soldiers, and many of the others were women and 
 children. Everywhere on the hills around them were the sav- 
 age Afghans, who fired on them and cut them down by hun- 
 dreds. It is hard to believe it, but of all that great company 
 only one man got safely away. This was a Dr. Brydon, who 
 was covered with cuts and bruises and so worn out that he 
 was ready to fall from his horse when he reached an Indian 
 city. A few had been taken prisoners, but all the rest were 
 dead. Of the whole army only this one man escaped. 
 
ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES 93 
 
 That was terrible enough, but a still more terrible event 
 was soon to come. The British had made soldiers of some 
 of the people of India, teaching them how to fight, and the 
 time came when they thought they would rather fight for 
 themselves than for their British masters. So they formed a 
 secret plot, and in 1857 they broke out into a dreadful 
 mutiny. Everywhere they suddenly began to kill the British 
 — the women as well as the men, and even the poor little 
 children. Things were done that are too horrible to talk about. 
 
 Have you ever heard of the siege of Lucknow ? In this 
 city were some soldiers and many women and children, and 
 around the city were thousands of savage mutineers, trying to 
 get in and kill them all. For months the soldiers 
 fouo'ht them off, hoping" that help would come. , ^, '^^^ ^ 
 
 t^ ' r fe r Lucknow 
 
 At last they were half dead with the heat and 
 with hunger, and began to fear that no one would ever come 
 to their aid. But one day a Scotch girl sprang to her feet 
 and cried out: " Dinna ye hear the pibroch ? " 
 
 She had heard the bagpipes playing a Highland air. They 
 were far off, but they came nearer and nearer, and got louder 
 and louder, and then the Highlanders appeared, marching 
 behind the piper and fighting their way through the enemy. 
 You may imagine there was a happy time in the city of Luck- 
 now that day. Life had come where they looked only for 
 death. In the end the mutiny was put down 
 and the mutineers were severely punished, and ^ .. . 
 the British were masters of India again. They 
 are masters of that country to-day, but no one can say how 
 long they will stay so ; for in the north are the Russians, who 
 would like to get India and China both ; and the people of 
 India themselves are very tired of having a foreign master, 
 and may rise in mutiny again some day. But all this is in the 
 future, and the future is not history. 
 
94 ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES 
 
 Now let US take a look at Africa, in which continent Eng- 
 land has some large colonies. Africa is a great country, full 
 of people, but nearly the whole of it has been taken as their 
 own by the nations of Europe. England holds the lion's 
 share, nearly 3,000,000 square miles. Then Germany, and 
 Portugal, and Spain, and Turkey have each their share, and 
 in the centre of the continent is the great Congo Free State, 
 about 900,000 square miles, under the control of little Bel- 
 gium. Nearly all the continent is claimed by the powers of 
 Europe, except part of the desert of Sahara and the rocky 
 country of Abyssinia, whose people have driven out their 
 enemies and kept their freedom. 
 
 England has the great Cape Colony in the south, of 
 
 which I shall speak in a later chapter. Then it bas large 
 
 colonies in the east and the west, and it holds 
 
 The Partition t- j. • j.u ^i t^ i. • 4. i 
 
 , . , . Egypt m the north. Egypt is not a colony. 
 
 The British have no right there ; but they stay 
 
 there all the same, and do not intend to let go as long a? they 
 
 can hold on. But they have had to fight in Egypt as hard 
 
 as in India. 
 
 It is claimed that Egypt owns all the land along the great 
 River Nile, as far as the great lakes of Central Africa. Here 
 is where most of the fighting has been. An Arab prophet 
 called the Mahdi stirred up the people of that region about 
 1880 and drove out the British and Egyptians with great 
 slaughter. Ever since then the British have been trying to 
 fight their way back. In this long fight the brave General 
 Gordon was killed and many others lost their lives. The last 
 battle was in 1897, when General Kitchener gave the Arabs a 
 terrible defeat. Thus if England is a little country in itself, 
 it is the most extensive country in the wodd if we count its 
 colonies. 
 
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CHAPTER XI 
 
 How Bismarck Made an Empire 
 
 OW-A-DAYS, in reading tiie newspapers, you 
 will not often miss seeing something about Ger- 
 many. Here you will read about its emperor, 
 there about its army and navy, farther on about 
 its laws or its people. It fills up so much space 
 in the daily news that you might well take it to be one of the 
 old empires of Europe. You would hardly think that this 
 empire of Germany is only about thirty years old. Yet such 
 is the case. You know how a mushroom grows. To-day it 
 is only a little white ball the size of a pea ; to-morrow it is a 
 wide-spreading, umbrella-shaped plant. That is the way Ger- 
 many has sprung up, something like a mushroom. 
 
 In the year 1800 there was a German people, but no 
 German nation. I have told you how Italy was once broken 
 up into little kingdoms. Germany was broken up much the 
 same way. If you fling down a pain of glass it is likely to 
 splinter into many fragments, some large, some 
 
 I- • 1 11 r" J How Germany 
 
 medmm sized, some small. Germany seemed r^. .^ ^ 
 
 -^ was Divided 
 
 to have been thrown down that way on the 
 map of Europe and splintered into large and small bits. In 
 the south was one great piece called the Empire of Austria. 
 In the north was another piece not so large called the King- 
 dom of Prussia. Then there were medium pieces called 
 Saxony, Bavaria, and so on. After them came smaller pieces, 
 and then a large number of tiny bits, some of them not much 
 larger than a plantation down South. There were more than 
 
 95 
 
96 HOW BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 
 
 three hundred of these states, some of which looked as if you 
 might pick them up and put them in your pocket. They had 
 their rulers, and their capitals, and their armies — if you call 
 that an army which is made up of a drummer, anci a general, 
 and a dozen or two of men. It was the kind of an army we 
 see sometimes on the stage at the theatre. 
 
 Most of the wars of Napoleon were with these German 
 states. For many centuries they had been joined together 
 into what was called the " Holy Roman Empire of the 
 German Nation." They pretended to keep up the old Empire 
 of Rome, but they were like so many beads on 
 did forGerman" '^ String. Napolcon cut the String and away 
 went the beads. That is to say, he put an end 
 to the Holy Roman Empire. But he joined many of the 
 small states together, and gave some of the little ones to the 
 large ones, so that when he got through, instead of their 
 being more than three hundred, there were only thirty-nine. 
 
 Two of these, Austria and Prussia, were powerful nations. 
 Four of them, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and Wurtemberg, 
 were strong kingdoms. Most of the other thirty-three were a 
 sort of vest-pocket states, whose rulers played at being kings. 
 I am sure if you had been at their capital cities and seen those 
 little rulers strutting about as if they owned the earth, you 
 could not have helped laughing at them. 
 
 Now let us go on down the century and see what else 
 took place. As the years went by, Prussia kept growing 
 stronger, while Austria stood still. Austria had once been 
 the great power in Germany, but Prussia now took its place. 
 Have you ever seen a young, strong fellow push an old man 
 aside and take his place ? That is what Prussia did to Austria. 
 
 In the year 1862 the king of Prussia died and a new king 
 came to the throne, under the name of William I. And one 
 of the first things King William did was to choose for his 
 
HOW BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 97 
 
 minister the ablest man in Germany, Count Otto von Bis- 
 marck. Now if any of my little girl friends will dress up her 
 doll in its best clothes, and put a sort of crown on its head, 
 and pretend it is a king, and seat herself in a chair beside it, 
 and pretend to be the king's minister, she will be able to see 
 how things went on after that in Germany. It is not quite 
 fair to call King William a dressed-up doll, but it was Count 
 Bismarck who did the work, and if it had not been for him 
 history would have very little to say about the great Emperor 
 William of Germany. It was Bismarck who made a big 
 emperor out of a little king. 
 
 Bismarck was a very able man, but a good deal of a 
 tyrant. He did all he could to overthrow the liberty of the 
 people. He made laws without asking the parliament. He 
 laid taxes, formed treaties with foreign nations, and did every- 
 thing very much as he pleased. When he said 
 
 T^- -^xrn- -J TT i. A. Bismarck and 
 
 yes, Kmgf VVilliam never said no. He went to ^. ,,,.„. 
 
 -^ ' o King William 
 
 war with Denmark and took a large piece of 
 land from that little kingdom. Then a dispute arose between 
 Prussia and Austria, and these two powerful nations went to 
 war. It was one of the shortest wars in history. In a few 
 weeks Austria was completely beaten, and Prussia became the 
 great power in Germany. This was in 1866. In 1870 there 
 came a greater war still. 
 
 I am going here to tell you how the war of 1870 came 
 about, for, though it did not last very long, it was one of the 
 most important wars in the nineteenth century. But first 
 there are two things you should know, since these are the things 
 that made Prussia so powerful. One was the strength of the 
 army of that country. After Prussia was beaten so badly by 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, early in the century, it began to drill 
 soldiers and collect guns and powder and shot, and invent 
 new weapons of war, until its army got to be the strongest in 
 
98 HOW BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 
 
 Europe. This was shown when it went to war with Austria, 
 for it whipped that powerful nation more quickly than Napo- 
 leon had done in any of his wars. 
 
 The second thing you should know is that Prussia grew 
 far stronger after the war with Austria. Some of the German 
 states which had helped Austria were seized by Prussia, much as 
 the United States has seized the Philippine Islands. Others of 
 these states joined with Prussia to form a North German con- 
 federation, a kind of federal union. In this way 
 
 The Growth of p^^^^ggj^ |. ^^ i^g ^^^ ^f ^^^ ,^^^3^ powerful 
 
 Prussia '^ ^ ^ 
 
 kingdoms in Europe. It is well you should 
 know this before you read about the war which helped Bis- 
 marck to make an empire out of a kingdom. In the past 
 Prussia had not been of much account in Europe ; now it 
 was to become of great account. 
 
 The war we are now talking about was with France. I 
 told you a little about it in the chapter on Louis Napoleon ; 
 now I must tell you more. You read in that chapter about 
 the blunder that Napoleon made when he tried to start an 
 empire in^ Mexico, and how quickly he got out when the 
 United States told him to go. This blunder did not help him 
 in France. Many of the people had always looked on him as 
 a thief who had stolen the empire, and as soon as he began 
 to make mistakes more people thought so. He did some 
 other things which the people did not like, and it may be he 
 began to fear that they would treat him as they had done 
 Charles X. and Louis Philippe, and send him packing off to 
 England. 
 
 There was one way to put them in good humor again, 
 and that was to go to war and win victories. After he had 
 fought with and beaten the Austrians, the people got to think 
 a great deal of him. If he could only defeat the Prussians, 
 who had defeated the Austrians, it would make him a greater 
 
HO W BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 99 
 
 man than ever. Napoleon thought he had a very fine army, 
 And he had a new gun which could throw twenty-five balls at 
 once. He fancied that with his soldiers and his machine gun 
 he could make as short work with Prussia as that country had 
 done with Austria. As for the thousands of men who would 
 be killed and wounded, and the families which w^ould be ruined 
 and thrown into misery and despair, by a w^ar, that did not 
 seem to trouble him. He thought a great deal more of him- 
 self and his power than of the people of France and Germany. 
 
 Of course, I am talking here about something that I only 
 guess at. We do not often know the secret thoughts in the 
 brains of kings and emperors, and can judge of what they 
 think only by what they do. What Napoleon seemed to do 
 was to look around him for some excuse for a 
 war, something to fight about. He found one ^^^^s, ^ 
 in Spain, which just then had no king, and was 
 in the market for one, and which had offered its throne to a 
 cousin of the royal family of Prussia, named Leopold. He 
 accepted it, as was very natural, for thrones do not often go 
 begging. 
 
 Here was an excuse for war, ready-made, for the French 
 
 emperor, who did not want to see a Prussian on the Spanish 
 
 throne. He sent word to King William of Prussia that he 
 
 must not let Prince Leopold accept the crown of Spain. King 
 
 William sent word back that he had nothing to do with it, 
 
 and that Leopold was his own master and free to do what he 
 
 pleased. When Leopold heard of all this uproar he drew 
 
 back and said he would not have the throne of Spain. That 
 
 ought to have ended the whole business, and it would, if 
 
 Napoleon had not wanted a war. As it was, he wrote to 
 
 King William that it was not right to let Leopold accept the 
 
 throne without consulting him and his 'cabinet. King William 
 
 replied that he had nothing more to say, and that he would 
 LcfC. 
 
loo HOW BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 
 
 not stop Prince Leopold from doing what he pleased in the 
 matter. That was enough. Napoleon had found the excuse 
 he wanted. He at once declared war against Prussia. 
 
 I have used the name of King William, but the fact is 
 that those answers came from Count Bismarck. The king 
 danced when Bismarck played the fiddle. And when the war 
 began, it was not the king who fought it, but a great general 
 named Von Moltke, who could handle an army better than 
 any man in Europe. As for the emperor Napoleon, he was 
 as blind as a bat, and went to war without knowing what he 
 was about. His uncle, the great Napoleon, 
 French^Arm ^ knew all about his army ; the little Napoleon 
 knew nothing about his. The war minister told 
 him that all was ready, and that " not a single button was 
 wanting on a single gaiter." The war minister knew no more 
 about it than the emperor. In fact, nothing was ready, and 
 there was a good deal more wanting than gaiter buttons. It 
 was only in the Prussian army that everything was ready and 
 not a button was missing. I fancy you can judge from this 
 what was the end of Napoleon's war. 
 
 The French were as ignorant of the state of affairs as 
 the emperor. " On to Berlin ! " they shouted, flinging their 
 hats into the air. They were full of high spirits. They said 
 that in a few days they would be across the borders, and in a 
 few weeks they would be in the Prussian capital, and that 
 then King William and Count Bismarck would be glad to 
 beg for peace. That was what they expected. What was the 
 fact ? The fact was that they did not cross the border at all, 
 they did not set foot on German territory, and the German 
 army marched into Paris instead of the French army into 
 Berlin. 
 
 Now I have talked enough about what went before the 
 war ; I must say something about the war itself I must let 
 
BOW BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE loi 
 
 you hear the guns boom and the drums beat. I know that is 
 what the boys Hke to hear, and some of the girls also. 
 
 When the French army reached the frontier what did 
 they see? There was the German army ready to meet them, 
 moving like clockwork, every wheel of it fitting neatly into 
 another wheel. General Von Moltke was too old to march 
 at the head of the army, but he laid out all the plans so finely 
 that it was said he had only to strike a bell and everything 
 went as he wished. That was not the way with 
 the French. There was no clockwork about ^_ ^^ ^^ 
 
 tmperors 
 
 their army. They were brave enough, but they 
 had no great leader, no fine organization, no large supplies, 
 and there was more confusion than system in their movements. 
 They had gone to war blindly and were soon to find that out. 
 
 The Emperor Napoleon marched with his army; his 
 heart full of pride and hope. The telegraph lines were all 
 ready to carry back the news of his victories to Paris. King 
 William was with his army, too, and he was quite as confi- 
 dent, and with more reason. The two armies met on August 
 2, 1870, and within a week four battles had been fought. In 
 the first the French got a little the best of it, and the wires 
 took to Paris the story of a brilliant victory. After that they 
 had nothing but the tale of defeat to carry. 
 
 On August 6th there was a terrible battle at a place 
 called Worth. It lasted fifteen hours, and both sides lost 
 heavily. The French were defeated and had to retreat. But 
 they had not gone far back before the Germans were ahead of 
 them, cutting them off. Then two more battles were fought. 
 On August 1 6th the two armies met at a place called Grave- 
 lotte, the Germans with 200,000 men, the French with 
 140,000. Here was fought the greatest battle of the war. 
 The armies struggled face to face all day long. Both sides 
 were brave and resolute. The French held their ground and 
 
I02 I/OJV BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 
 
 died like heroes. The Germans dashed on them and died like 
 heroes. For nine hours went on the terrible conflict, and 
 40,000 men fell dead or wounded on the bloody field. Then 
 Bazaine, the French general, gave it up and withdrew his men 
 to the strong city of Metz. He had fought bravely but had 
 failed. The Germans surrounded Metz and held him there. 
 In this way half the French army was shut up in a cage. 
 
 There was another army of about 140,000 men under 
 
 Marshal MacMahon, an able general, who had won fame in 
 
 Italy. The Emperor Napoleon was with him. MacMahon 
 
 tried to reach Metz and join Bazaine and his men, and Von 
 
 Moltke laid his plans to stop him. He did so, 
 
 e rap a ^^^ . ^|_^^ French were driven back, and at the 
 
 end of August they gathered around a fortress 
 
 named Sedan, on the Belgian frontier of France. It was just 
 
 the sort of place Von Moltke wanted to get them in. He 
 
 laughed when he saw tliem there. "The trap is closed and 
 
 the mouse in it," he said. 
 
 It turned out as he said. The German army spread out 
 till they surrounded the French, and poured on them such a 
 hail-storm of shot and shell that the valley was filled with 
 dead and wounded. The French fought with their old cour- 
 age, but they could not get out, and they were murdered in 
 multitudes. In the end the whole army had to surrender. 
 On the 2d of September, just one month after the first fight, 
 an army of 83,000 men became prisoners of war, and with 
 them the Emperor of France. 
 
 Two days afterwards Louis Napoleon ceased to be 
 emperor. A meeting was held in Paris, a new government 
 was formed, the emperor was deposed, and a republic was 
 established. This was a revolution, though it was finished in 
 a day and without a shot being fired or a drop of blood shed. 
 There have not been many revolutions like that. 
 
HO W BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 103 
 
 The war went on, but France had no chance to win. On 
 October 30th Marshal Bazaine surrendered Metz and gave up 
 his army of more than 150,000 men as prisoners of war. 
 Then the Germans gathered around Paris and besieged that 
 great city. Here the French made their last strong fight 
 They held out for four months, until the people 
 were so hungry that they had to eat the animals p^^.^ 
 in the Zoological Garden. They gave up when 
 there was nothing more to eat. Soon all the armies of France 
 were dispersed, all its fortresses were captured, and the Ger- 
 mans were masters of France. Napoleon's war had proved 
 the greatest blunder of his life, for it ruined his country and 
 ended his reign. 
 
 There is one more thing of great importance to speak 
 about — " How Bismarck made an Empire." What that great 
 statesman wished to do was to restore the old German Empire 
 and put Prussia at its head. This he had long worked for ; 
 now the time had come to finish his task. North Germany 
 was united with Prussia ; he got the South German states to 
 enter into the same union, and to form an empire with King 
 William at its head. 
 
 His great work was finished at Versailles, the royal city 
 of France, on the i8th of January, 1871. It was done with 
 the utmost splendor and show, and when the crown of the 
 empire was put on the head of the new emperor, William I. 
 of Germany, there was such a shout as had sel- 
 dom been heard there before, and the whole ^^ Germany 
 great assembly sang the national hymns of 
 Germany. Since then the country of the Germans has been 
 divided into the German Empire and the Austrian Empire, 
 and the emperor of Germany has been one of the leading 
 monarchs of Europe. To Count Bismarck he owes his power 
 and his fame. 
 
I04 I/O IV BISMARCK MADE AN EMPIRE 
 
 The war ended on the loth of May, 1871, on which day 
 
 a treaty of peace was made. France had to pay a high price 
 
 for Louis Napoleon's short war, for Germany took as her own 
 
 the two provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and made her pay 
 
 a war tax of $1,000,000,000. The French 
 
 Treaty of Peace ir > > > 
 
 people had made the greatest mistake in their 
 history when they voted for Louis Napoleon as emperor, 
 unless it was that in which they made his warlike uncle the 
 leader of their armies. The nation would certainly have bt^en 
 far better off if it had never seen a Napoleon. 
 
 I have not told you the whole story of the war. France 
 soon had a new enemy to fight. Paris had been stirred up to 
 its dregs by the siege, and a terrible outbreak took place in 
 that city, the lawless element of the people rebelling against 
 the new government and fighting fiercely for control. It 
 seemed like the great French Revolution brought back. The 
 rioters seized the city, shot those who opposed them, set on 
 fire or tore down some of the noblest buildings and monu- 
 ments, and fought the troops of the republic like so many 
 demons. They were at length put down, but the streets were 
 filled with the dead and the river ran red with blood before 
 peace and order were brought back to the famous old city of 
 Paris, which had gone through the most terrible year in all its 
 career. It v/as a year long to be remembered in the histoiy 
 of Europe. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Bolivar the Liberator and Toussaint 
 
 the Brave 
 
 F we were to go around the world in search of 
 great men we would hardly think of stopping in 
 South America. Somehow Spain and her colonies 
 have not been good soil to grow great men in. 
 It was not always this way. A few centuries 
 ago Spain was a nursery for great men. I could name a 
 dozen of them. But of late times Spain has been going down 
 hill while other nations have been going up, and in the nine- 
 teenth century it has not had a man whom anybody would 
 think of calling great. In the colonies of Spain there has 
 been only one such man, the famous General 
 
 or u ^ T • i- • English and 
 
 Bolivar, whose story I am e^omof to g'lve you. c, . . ^ , . 
 
 ' J & c5 ^5 J Spanish Colonies 
 
 I have told you already what brought about 
 the American Revolution, but I may say again that it was 
 the unjust w^ay in vvhich the colonies were treated by George 
 III., the English king. This taught England a lesson, and 
 she quit treating her colonies in that way. She went to 
 school, we may say, to the American people. 
 
 But it did not teach Spain any lesson. That country 
 was too proud to go to school to her colonies. She went on 
 acting the tyrant to her people in America, and the time came 
 when they got tired of it. They had seen how the people of 
 the United States v/on their freedom, and they made up their 
 minds to try and do the same thing. Thus the American 
 
 105 
 
io6 BOLIVAR AND TOUSSAINT 
 
 Revolution was a kind of object lesson to the people of 
 Spanish America. Not long after the nineteenth century 
 came in, war broke out in all the Spanish colonies, from 
 Mexico in the north to Chili in the south. And they kept 
 fighting till they all became free. I cannot tell you about all 
 these cruel wars, so I shall speak only of Bolivar, the famous 
 man whom the people of South America called the Liberator. 
 
 Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, the capital of Vene- 
 zuela, a country in the northern part of South America. He 
 was not brought up to love Spain, and he was born with a 
 great liking for war and adventure. So, when his native 
 country broke out in rebellion, he was quick to join the rebels, 
 The Venezue= ^.nd in a short time they made him one of their 
 lans and their leaders. For two or three years he fought for 
 Liberator them, fought SO hard and well that the people 
 
 called him their Liberator. But they were too soon, for they 
 were not liberated yet. Spain put down the rebellion, and in 
 1 813 Bolivar had to flee for his life to the English island of 
 Jamaica. 
 
 You may know how brave and able a soldier Bolivar 
 was when I tell you that the Spaniards were more afraid of 
 him than of all of the rest of. the people. They thought that 
 nothing was safe while Simon Bolivar was alive. If they could 
 get rid of him there was not another man in South America 
 whom they cared about. They set out to get rid of this dan- 
 gerous man in a true Spanish fashion. 
 
 A spy was sent to Jamaica to seek for General Bolivar 
 and to kill him in any way he could. He soon found him, 
 — Bolivar did not hide himself He watched him and fol- 
 lowed him secretly till he knew all about the life and habits 
 of the Liberator. Then he hired a negro to murder him, pay- 
 ing him well for the bloody work. The negro was told just 
 what he was to do, and at midnight he crept up to Bolivar's 
 
BOLIVAR AND TOUSSAINT 107 
 
 hammock and plunged his knife into the breast of the man 
 who was sleeping there. By good luck, Bolivar was not 
 sleeping there that night, and it was his unfortunate secre- 
 tary who was murdered. 
 
 After that Bolivar took better care of himself Three 
 years after he had left Venezuela he was back there again, 
 with money and muskets, and he soon had another army in 
 the field. He fought on for three more years. Now his men 
 were defeated and had to flee for their lives ; now they were 
 victorious and the Spaniards had to flee ; at last, in 18 19, 
 they w^on a victory that brought freedom to the country. 
 
 Never was there a more cruel war. The Spanish soldiers 
 and officers acted like brutal savages. Their prisoners and 
 the people of the country were tortured and murdered in hor- 
 rible ways. One writer tells us that he saw 
 
 1 1 /- 1 • 1 11 1 • 1 -Spanish Cruelty 
 
 more than seven thousand of their skulls dried 
 and heaped together. Every person who could read and write 
 was put to death. The Spaniards thought they could end 
 the revolution by killing all the educated. 
 
 I shall say nothing more about those horrors ; some of 
 them are too terrible even to mention. It is better to tell 
 how Bolivar won freedom for his country. After the war 
 had gone on for three years, and neither side was much the 
 better off, a bright idea came to General Bolivar. This was 
 to cross the Andes Mountains and drive the Spaniards out 
 of New Grenada. If he could win that country, it would 
 give him a great advantage. He wanted to take the Spaniards 
 by surprise, but he had a terrible journey before him. It was 
 worse than Napoleon's crossing the Alps. First, the army 
 had to march over an immense plain which was covered with 
 water at that time of the year, and was crossed by seven deep 
 rivers, which the soldiers had to swim. And all their baggage 
 and war supplies had to be taken over this difficult country. 
 
io8 BOLIVAR AND TOUSSAINT 
 
 This was bad enough, but it was not the worst. After 
 the plain came the mountains, and, bad as the Alps may be, 
 the Andes are worse. The soldiers had to toil up steep defiles, 
 and narrow ravines down which ran brawlins: mountain tor- 
 rents. The rains fell steadily and cataracts came tumbling 
 over every height. Often the roads ran along the edges of 
 precipices, where a false step would fling the unlucky traveler 
 down hundreds or thousands of feet. After four days they 
 were forced to give up their horses and go on foot, as the 
 animals could proceed no farther. 
 
 The torrents had to be crossed on narrow bridges made 
 of tree trunks, or even by means of ropes tied to trees on both 
 sides of the stream. Some of them could be forded, but a 
 slip of the foot meant death. When they got higher there 
 was less water, but the air grew chilly, and they 
 ^j^^gg found themselves amid huge rocks whose crev- 
 
 ices were filled with deep snow. The men, who 
 were used to warm winds, shivered with the cold. More than 
 a hundred of them froze to death, and what was worse for the 
 army their food gave out and starvation threatened them. 
 They had brought some cattle thus f^ir, but here they had to 
 leave them. 
 
 But nothing could stop Bolivar. He crossed the terrible 
 mountains, reached the upland province, took the Spaniards by 
 surprise, and defeated them wherever he met them. Horses 
 were collected, many of the men left behind came up, the 
 people of the country joined him, and soon he was strong 
 enough to fight the whole Spanish army in the field. He 
 met the enemy in August, 1819, at a place called Boyaca, 
 deceived them by an ambush, and defeated them so com- 
 pletely that all of the soldiers who were not killed were taken 
 prisoners. The general and nearly all the officers were taken. 
 And how many men do you think the patriot army lost in 
 
BOLIVAR AND TOUSSAINT 109 
 
 this victory ? Only 13 killed and 53 wounded ! It was like 
 General Jackson's victory at New Orleans. 
 
 Two years afterwards, in 1821, General Bolivar won 
 another great victory, the Spaniards losing more than 6000 
 men. That ended the struggle. The Spaniards left the 
 country, and a republic was formed like that of the United 
 States, with Bolivar for president. 
 
 While this was going on the other Spanish colonies in 
 America were fighting for their liberty. In Chili an important 
 victory was won at Maypu in 181 7, and that country gained its 
 freedom. One after another all the colonies in South America 
 broke into rebellion, and Central America and Mexico joined 
 in the struggle. They all won their liberty, 
 
 ju o_o-ij i. 1 \ Ci. • other Colonies 
 
 and by 1825 Spam had not a colony left m ^j^ preedom 
 America except the islands of Cuba and Porto 
 Rico. She lost these, too, before the end of the century. 
 The fault was her own. Bad government, cruelty, and oppres- 
 sion drove the people into rebellion, and of Spain's great 
 empire hardly anything was left but Spain itself 
 
 What else shall I say of General Bolivar ? After he had 
 won liberty for Venezuela and New Grenada, he m.arched into 
 Peru and drove the Spaniards from that country also. For 
 this he was made Dictator of Peru. In 1825 he formed a new 
 state, which the people called Bolivia, after his name, and 
 made him its president for life. He died five years afterwards, 
 the greatest man in South America. 
 
 Before I end this chapter I must tell you about another 
 liberator, the more so that he was a black man, a pure-blooded 
 African, come of a race in which we do not look for great 
 generals. He was born in the island of Hayti, a slave and the 
 son of a slave, although he was the descendant of an African 
 prince. His name was Toussaint L' Overture. Slave as he 
 was, he had learned how to read and write, and he was so 
 
no BOLIVAR AND TOUSSAINT 
 
 intelligent and trusty that his master put him in charge of 
 his sugar-house. But the peaceful times in Hayti came to an 
 end in 1791. That island belonged to France, and France 
 was then in its great revolution, murdering its noblemen, so 
 the slaves in Hayti broke out in rebellion also and murdered 
 many of their masters. But Toussaint saved the lives of his 
 master and family and helped them to escape from the island. 
 Then he joined the army of blacks that was fighting for liberty 
 The rebels said they were fighting for Louis XVI., who 
 was in prison in France. They were obliged to fight againsl. 
 their old masters, many of whom came back to the island to 
 win their lost estates, and also ag^ainst th^t 
 
 A Noble Negro . 7i, 
 
 English and Spaniards, who came to help them. 
 Toussaint soon showed himself the ablest man among the 
 negroes and was made the chief general of their army. His 
 people grew to love him deeply, and he showed himself a 
 very able general. 
 
 In 1794 the French declared that all their slaves should 
 be free, and a French general was sent to Hayti to drive out 
 the English and Spanish. Toussaint helped them with his 
 troops, and was made commander-in-chief by the French 
 commissioner in 1796. In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte gave 
 him the same title. 
 
 Toussaint was now at the height of his power. All classes 
 and colors of the people looked on him as a noble and 
 generous ruler. He governed them with kindness and 
 humanity and brought back good order and prosperous times 
 to the country. Then he made a constitution for his country, 
 and the grateful people elected him president for life. 
 
 Poor man ! he had the Corsican usurper to deal with. 
 He sent Napoleon a copy of his constitution. He thought he 
 could trust a man who, like himself, had gained power through 
 courage, but he made a sad mistake. 
 
BOLIVAR AND TOUSSAINT iii 
 
 " He is a slave and rebel," said Napoleon. "We must 
 punish him ; the honor of France demands it. All these 
 negroes are slaves, and slaves they shall remain." 
 
 Napoleon was to find that it is not easy to enslave a 
 people who have once enjoyed the blessing of freedom. In 
 r8oi he sent an army of 35,000 men to Hayti to put down 
 Toussaint and his republic. Toussaint went 
 back to the mountains, foup^ht the French ^"^^ eon an 
 
 ' o Toussaint 
 
 bravely, and killed thousands of them. Their 
 general could not defeat him and had to treat with him and 
 offer liberty to him and his people. Toussaint agreed and 
 peace was made. 
 
 He did not know Napoleon. The next year he was 
 taken prisoner by treachery, carried to France, and put in the 
 dungeon of a castle. Here he died in 1803 ; some say that 
 he was starved to death. Napoleon has been called a mur- 
 derer because he arrested a French prince in Germany, 
 brought him to France and had him shot. I think he was as 
 base a murderer in his treatment of this great and noble 
 negro. And it was a murder that brought him no good. 
 Hayti kept its freedom, and it is a free country to-day. But 
 when we talk of the men who won freedom for America we 
 must not forget the negro liberator, Toussaint L' Overture. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Development of the United States 
 
 OU have taken a long journey now over the old 
 world, and been introduced to a number of 
 interesting people who had much to do with the 
 history of that part of the earth during the past 
 century. Among these were Napoleon, Nelson 
 and Wellington, Gladstone, Garibaldi and Bismarck, and others 
 I might name. Likely enough now, before you hear anything 
 more about the old world, you would like to go to America 
 and see what was going on in that country while all these 
 events were taking place in Europe. 
 
 Of course, I do not forget that we made a railroad jour- 
 ney through the United States in the beginning of our work. 
 But that was done at express speed; we traveled in a sort of 
 lightning train ; now it seems well to make a slower journey 
 and get a better idea of the history of the western world. 
 
 I do not imagine that the thought ever came to you that 
 the nineteenth century history of the United States divides 
 itself into two great sections ; but such is the case. The first 
 of these sections began with the adoption of the grand Con- 
 stitution of the American republic, that founda- 
 Sections'" ^^^^ stone of its laws and government which 
 
 was laid just before the opening of the century. 
 It ended in 1861, when Abraham Lincoln became President 
 and the great Civil War commenced. The second section 
 began with this war and ended at the close of the century, 
 
 when the far-off Philippine Islands were added to the United 
 112 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 113 
 
 States and it began to take part in the politics of the world. 
 This was the first step in a third section of American history, 
 which will be developed in the twentieth century. In this 
 chapter we shall speak only of the first section, during which 
 the early development of the great republic was going on. 
 
 At the opening of this period the United States was not 
 much of a country. In the year 1800 its population was 
 only 5,300,000, about equal to that of Canada to-day, and there 
 were in the whole country only six cities of more than 8,000 
 inhabitants. The largest of these was Philadelphia, which had 
 about 50,000 people. It was looked on as a 
 great city at that time ; but it would look small stlteslni^ 
 to-day, when there are in that land three cities 
 with more than a million inhabitants each. The country was 
 a pretty big one even then, but the most of it was forest land, 
 where nobody but Indians lived ; and in the wild west the 
 people were spread out very thin indeed. 
 
 If you had gone from end to end of the land at that time 
 you would not have seen a railroad or a steamboat, but only 
 sailboats on the streams and lumbering farm teams and emi- 
 grant wagons on the roads, with a rattling stage-coach here 
 and there. Instead of the great mills and factories which are 
 now to be seen everywhere, you would have seen only a few 
 little workshops, and in many of the houses you would have 
 heard the whirr of the spinning-wheel and the rattle of the 
 loom, with which the women of the house made homespun 
 cloth for themselves and their families. Just think of that ! 
 Why, to-day we look on a spinning-wheel as we might on 
 something that came out of Noah's ark, and wonder what 
 good it ever did. 
 
 What I want to fix in your minds is the fact that in 1800 
 that country was in its infancy. It was only beginning the 
 great growth which it has made since. Now it is fast becom- 
 
114 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 ing full grown, with its nearly 80,000,000 people and its won- 
 derful industries and great wealth. What it will become in 
 another. century it is not easy to guess. 
 
 As I have already told you, it w^as not long after 1800 
 that its great growth in territory began. In 1803 it bought 
 Louisiana from France, and at one great jump the country 
 more than doubled its size. The people did not well know 
 what they had bought. Hardly a w^iite man had ever set 
 foot on that w^estern land. It was the land of 
 r&a I ion ^^^ Indian and the buffalo, of broad plains and 
 
 of Territory ' ^ 
 
 lofty mountains ; and w^hen the daring travelers, 
 Lewis and Clark, set out to explore it, it took them two years 
 to travel over this great new region. After they told what 
 they had seen nobody was sorry that the country had spread 
 so far west. What was paid for it then would not buy some 
 of its smaller cities to-day. 
 
 That was only the beginning. Before the great Civil 
 War the republic had had a still more wonderful growth. 
 It bought Florida in 1819. Texas was added to it in 1845. 
 In 1846 it got the great Oregon country, which now is 
 divided into three large states. And in 1848 a vast territory 
 was added to the United States, known as California and New 
 Mexico, but much larger than w4iat we now know by these 
 names. This came as the result of the war w^ith Mexico. 
 
 You may see that in less than fifty years the country 
 had spread out as if by magic. In 1800 it reached only to 
 the Mississippi River ; in 1850 it stretched out to the Pacific 
 Ocean. In 1800 it had no water boundary on the south ; in 
 1850 it reached to the Gulf of Mexico, and farther west it took 
 in a great part of old Mexico. It began in 1800 with about 
 827,000 square miles ; in 1850 it possessed more than 
 3,000,000 square miles. That was a pretty big jump, was it 
 not, for half a century ? 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 115 
 
 I can tell you, though, that it took a long time to settle 
 that country. It was like a boy with a large cake and a small 
 appetite. Give him time enough and he will eat all his cake, 
 but he cannot swallow it all at once. That is the way it was 
 with the Americans. They have been nibbling at their cake 
 ever since, and it is not all eaten yet. For out west there are 
 great sections of land on which no one lives. That is because 
 they are rainless deserts, and nobody can live there until water 
 is brought to them in some way. And there are other sections 
 that could feed five times as many people as live on them. 
 
 There were two things that went on in the time I am 
 speaking of — there was fighting and there was working. 
 These are two things that have gone on in all countries, and 
 the fighting is nearly always a bad thing, for it 
 stops the working and destroys much of what '^ '"^ ^" 
 the work has produced. But sometimes it is a 
 good thing, for it destroys a bad state of affairs and brings 
 about a better state. There is not often anything so bad but 
 that it may have some good in it. 
 
 For three years, from 181 2 to 18 15, the United States 
 was at war with England. This was a war of pride. England 
 had insulted the Americans by taking sailors from their ships, 
 and they wanted satisfaction. They did not get much ; neither 
 country got much satisfaction from that war, v/hich did a 
 great deal of harm and very little good. What satisfaction 
 there was came to the United States, for it showed England 
 that it could vvhip her on the sea, and after that she let its 
 ships and sailors alone. 
 
 In 1846 it went to war with Mexico. That war there 
 was no need of, and it would not have come on if both sides 
 had not been a little too anxious to fight. Instead of nego- 
 tiating and arbitrating, as very likely would be done to-day, 
 they got into a quarrel about which nation owned the land 
 
ii6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 between two rivers ; both of them sent soldiers there, and as 
 soon as the soldiers came together they began to fight. It is 
 easy enough to have a war, you see, if both parties want it. 
 But often one of the parties makes a mistake. I have told 
 you how Louis Napoleon made a mistake in 1870. Mexico 
 made a great mistake in 1846, for it was not half strong enough 
 to fight the United States. 
 
 What is more, Mexico had no good generals, and the 
 United States had some excellent ones. General Jackson, 
 who had won the battle of New Orleans, died the year before 
 this war began, but there were General Scott and General Tay- 
 lor, both of whom had shown themselves very 
 -. .^* pfood soldiers. So it turned out that in all the 
 
 Mexico o 
 
 war the Mexicans did not gain a single victory, 
 and they were beaten in battles where they had the most men 
 and the best ground. 
 
 The greatest victory was won by General Taylor at a 
 place called Buena Vista. He had only 5000 men, and Santa 
 Anna, the Mexican general, had 20,000. But Taylor s men 
 were in a mountain pass which was hard to take, and they 
 fought so well that they drove away Santa Anna and his 
 large army. 
 
 General Taylor was not a man to put on airs. He did 
 not care for a fine uniform, and often wore a rusty old suit 
 and a straw hat. The soldiers called him old " Rough and 
 Ready." He knew how to fight, and that was what he was 
 best suited for. After the war the people thought so much of 
 him that they elected him President of the United States. 
 This was a great mistake. He was not made to be a states- 
 man, and he was worried so much by the politicians that he 
 died before his time was half over. 
 
 General Scott took his army by water down to the Mexi- 
 can port of Vera Cruz. Here he landed and marched across 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 117 
 
 the country, defeating the Mexicans wherever he met them, 
 though they often had stj-ong forts and many more men than 
 he. They did not make a good fight. In fact they made a very 
 poor one. They were driven back, step by step, to their 
 capital city of Mexico, and into this General Scott marched 
 with his army. Then the Mexicans gave it up and asked 
 for peace. 
 
 I have already told you that the United States got Cali- 
 fornia and New Mexico from this war. The troops held them 
 at the end of the war, and the government bought them from 
 Mexico as later on it bought the Philippine 
 Islands from Spain. What was paid for them ^ j.^ ^^. 
 amounted to about $18,000,000. A few years 
 afterwards, when gold was being dug in vast quantities in 
 California, it would not have sold them back for a hundred 
 times that sum. 
 
 Besides these two large wars there were a number of small 
 wars with the Indians. Those I shall not say anything about 
 here. They all ended one way, the Indians were defeated 
 and made to give up part of their lands. Step by step they 
 were crowded back into the country which the white people 
 did not yet want ; when they came to want it the Indians 
 had to give way again. In this way it has always gone on. 
 But I shall say no more about the Indians here, as I intend 
 to tell you about them in the next chapter. 
 
 Now that so much has been said about the triumphs of 
 war, let us turn for a time to the triumphs of peace. After 
 the war of 181 2 the United States was not in a very good 
 state. It had spent more than $80,000,000 and had nothing 
 to show for it. That would not be thought much of nowa- 
 days, but it was a good deal for a poor country. All the gold 
 and silver had disappeared and there was only paper money 
 in use — and not a very good kind of paper money either, not 
 
ii8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
 
 nearly so safe as that we use to-day. The trade of the country 
 was ruined. Manufactures had sprung up during the war, 
 but after it British ships filled the country with cheap goods, 
 so that many of the manufacturers had to stop operations. 
 
 If you know much about the American spirit you will 
 
 know that the people were not of the kind to let that state of 
 
 affairs last. They went to work with a will and soon there 
 
 was a new story to tell. Ships were built and launched and 
 
 began to carry American products across the 
 
 very ing scas. And a tariff law was passed by Con- 
 
 Booming . 
 
 gress which put a high tax on foreign goods 
 and raised their price, so that the factories of the country 
 were soon at work again and many new ones were being 
 built. Before the century was very old everything was boom- 
 ing and the people were fast growing rich. 
 
 This was the time that steamboats were being put on the 
 rivers and steamships on the oceans, so that travel and the 
 carriage of goods greatly increased. Good, solid highways 
 were built in place of the old dirt roads, and canals were dug, 
 the greatest of these being the Erie Canal in New York. Soon 
 after came a greater thing still, the railroad. The locomotive 
 had been invented in England and brought to the United 
 States, where the people laid rails across the land so rapidly 
 that in time they had thousands of miles of this kind of road. 
 Thus travel grew greater than it had ever been, and corn and 
 wheat and goods of all kinds were carried faster and cheaper 
 than had been dreamed of by any one in past times. 
 
 Never did a country grow more rapidly. People crossed 
 the ocean so fast that in 1850 there were in the great republic 
 more than 23,000,000 inhabitants, all intelligent and active 
 workers. Into the land they pushed, mile after mile, league 
 after league. The forests were cut down and new farms 
 planted, until the Americans were able to feed, not only 
 
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 119 
 
 themselves, but much of the old world. In the South cotton 
 was grown over an immense region and England was sup- 
 plied with all it wanted for its busy looms. But the United 
 States no longer depended on England and Europe for goods. 
 The rattle of machinery could be heard in all parts of the 
 country. Every kind of goods was made there, the most 
 wonderful machines were invented, and no other country in 
 the world went ahead half so fast. 
 
 Is not this a good deal to say for that young nation ? I 
 am not boasting. What I have told you is the truth. And 
 it is not all the truth, for there were riches of nature which 
 were still greater than the riches of art and industry. Never 
 was there a country with more wonderful stores . , . . 
 
 •1 1-1 Mineral Wealth 
 
 of natural wealth for the use of mankmd. 
 
 Iron could be had in whole mountains, for there is a 
 mountain in Missouri which is made up of iron ore. Pennsyl- 
 vania was found to be full of this metal and of coal, and these 
 valuable products were found in many other places, the beds 
 of coal and iron surpassing any other country in the world. 
 Then there were rich mines of copper and lead and other 
 metals, and in time it was found that the United States was 
 one of the richest countries in the world in gold and silver. 
 Later on great wells of petroleum, or rock oil, were opened, 
 and it was able to light up the world. 
 
 Even this is not all its wealth. There was the timber 
 of its mighty forests, and its rivers and oceans were found 
 to be full of valuable fishes, so that in every way that country 
 had a rich supply of nature's wealth, and it went ahead faster 
 than any other country in the world. 
 
 I cannot tell you all that was done from the time of the 
 signing of the Constitution to the beginning of the great Civil 
 War, but from what I have said you can see how fast the 
 Western republic has grown. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 The Indians and the Negroes 
 
 ID you ever think of the great variety of people in 
 the country we all live in? There are English, 
 Irish and Scotch, French, Dutch and Germans, 
 Swedes, Italians and Turks, and men and 
 women of various other nations. And that is 
 not all ; there are white men, black men, red men, and yellow 
 men. The white men are the Europeans, the yellow men the 
 Chinese, the black men the Negroes, and the red men the 
 Indians. 
 
 I do not need to tell you how these races of people 
 differ. You see the black men everywhere among us, quietly 
 at work, good-natured and peaceful. The red men are very 
 different. They are fierce and savage, and like 
 better to fight than to work. When the white 
 men first came here they found these red-faced 
 people, whom they called Indians, hunting in the woods, fish- 
 ing in the streams, and fighting with one another in woods 
 and on streams alike. 
 
 I cannot tell you the whole history of the Indians. All 
 I can say is that they have been fighting with the whites ever 
 since the first white men came to this country. You need not 
 wonder at this, for the newcomers treated the old owners of 
 the land very badly. The Indians were quiet and peaceful 
 under William Penn and all those who paid them for their 
 lands. But they fought like tigers with the people of New 
 England and all who robbed them of their homes. 
 
 120 
 
 The Indians or 
 Red Men 
 
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW WLN DELL PHILLIPS EDWARD EVERETT 
 
 GREAT AMERICAN ORATORS AND STATESMEN 
 
SIX GREt^T AM 
 
 POET 
 
THE INDIANS AND THE NEGROES 121 
 
 But what could these poor ignorant savages do against 
 the white men with their rifles and cannon ? They were 
 pushed back to the west until they were nearly all driven over 
 the Mississippi River. And they did not get much rest there. 
 
 There were many great warriors among the Indians. 
 There was the brave Tecumseh, who thought he could drive 
 all the white men from the country. There was the bold 
 Osceola, who fought like a lion for his home in Florida. 
 There was Black Hawk, the daring chief of the west. There 
 were dozens of others, but one after another they were all 
 killed or captured, and the white men kept pushing deeper 
 and deeper into their country. 
 
 What do you think of all this ? Does it seem to you 
 that the American people ought to be proud of their dealings 
 with the Indians? Ought they not to be very much ashamed? 
 Why, I have -not told you the half of it ; they not only fought 
 with and killed them, but they robbed and cheated them in a 
 hundred ways. The Indians were ignorant and 
 simple-minded and could easily be deceived, ^^l^^^^ 
 The whites were shrewd and cunning, and 
 played all sorts of dishonest tricks on the old owners of the 
 soil. They wanted the rich lands of the red men, and when 
 they could not get them by fair means they got them by foul. 
 If I were to tell you fully how the red men were treated I 
 know you would feel that the whites were very much to blame. 
 
 Down in Georgia there was a great body of peaceful 
 Indians tilling the soil and not interfering with the whites. 
 But there were men who wanted their fertile lands and tried 
 to get them by a dishonest trick. In the end the poor savages 
 had to give up their native land, and were made to go to new 
 lands beyond the Mississippi. A large number of them died 
 on the way, some of them, very likely, from sorrow and grief, 
 for they loved their homes as dearly as we loved ours. 
 
122 THE INDIANS AND THE NEGROES 
 
 The same thing took place in Florida. The settlers there 
 wanted the Indians removed so that they could have their 
 lands. But the red men would not give up their homes and 
 fought for them as bravely as our forefathers fought against 
 the British. The war lasted about as long as the Revolution, 
 but the white men proved too strong, and most of the Indians 
 were taken and sent away to the west. But some of them 
 stayed, hiding in the great Florida swamps, and their children 
 live there to-day. 
 
 When the nineteenth century came in, the United States 
 did not extend west of the Mississippi River. But soon after- 
 wards the western country was bought from France and 
 explored by Lewis and Clark, and then our people began to 
 cross the great river and make their way into the wide wil- 
 derness beyond. Here they found new tribes of Indians — the 
 great tribes of the Sioux, the Comanches of 
 
 Extension and -i- ^.i, r: /^u a *^u 
 
 J Texas, the fierce Cheyennes, and many others. 
 
 Soon the old story began again. The rough 
 
 pioneers pressed upon the Indians and maltreated them in 
 
 a hundred mean ways, and the agents sent out by the 
 
 povernmcnt to take care of them robbed and starved them. 
 
 o 
 
 When the Indians grew angry and killed some of their 
 oppressors, soldiers were sent to settle the difficulty by shoot- 
 ing them down. This went on for many years, until the red 
 men lost nearly all their lands in the west, as they had lost 
 their lands in the east. Most of them were sent to the Indian 
 Territory, where the Indians of Georgia and Florida were then 
 living. Others were given new lands elsewhere, where they 
 were looked after by the government, and in time all the fight- 
 ing and killing came to an end. 
 
 I have told you about how the Indians were treated. It 
 was very shabby and mean, was it not ? But you should not 
 blame the government very severely for it. It was the fron- 
 
THE INDIANS AND THE NEGROES 123 
 
 tiersmen and the political agents and the gold hunters and 
 cunning and dishonest men of all kinds that made the trouble. 
 And the red men added to the difficulty. Instead of ask- 
 ing for their rights, they tried to get them by shooting and 
 burning their enemies. I suppose it could not be helped. 
 Human nature is the same everywhere. When savage and 
 civilized men come together things are sure to go wrong, and 
 there are always injustice and violence. All I can say here is 
 that the wrong-doing with the Indians seems now at an end ; 
 m.any of them are settled and civilized, and all of them are 
 likely to be so before many years. 
 
 Now let us turn from the red to the black men, and see 
 what is to be said about them. They did not belong to this 
 country like the red men. And they did not come here to 
 make new homes for themselves like the white men. They 
 were stolen away from their homes in Africa and brought here 
 against their wills, and treated so badly that many of them 
 died on the way and were thrown overboard into the sea. 
 Those who lived to reach this country were sold as slaves. 
 That is, they did not own themselves as you do, but were 
 owned by others. They could not do as they 
 wished, or go where they pleased, but had to „ ^ avery 
 do as they were told. The only way they could 
 go from one plantation to another was to be sold to a new 
 master. I am afraid you cannot quite appreciate this. There 
 are no slaves in this country to-day, and have been none 
 since you were born. But in the days of your fathers and 
 grandfathers there were millions of them, men with black faces 
 and strong hands, who had to work where they were told and 
 could be cruelly whipped if they refused to obey their master's 
 word. , In those times most of our people thought this was 
 right. Nowadays nobody thinks it right, and no civilized 
 country keeps men in slavery. 
 
124 THE INDIANS AND THE NEGROES 
 
 If you think slavery was wrong, you think as many did 
 in the first half of the century. And this belief gave rise to 
 great events. The most important part of our history in the 
 nineteenth century came from the belief that slavery was an 
 unjust and cruel institution, for it led to a great and terrible 
 war that almost broke our country into two. I must tell you 
 how this war came about. 
 
 The people who did not believe in slavery were not the 
 kind of men who keep their thoughts to themselves. They 
 talked about it, and lectured about it, and printed newspapers 
 about it, and kept on talking and printing until a great many 
 more took up the same belief. Then they formed abolition 
 societies and anti-slavery societies, and sent men to Congress, 
 and the same kind of talk was soon heard in the House and 
 the Senate of the United States. 
 
 In time Congress was divided into two parties, a slavery 
 and an anti-slavery party. Both sides were strong in their 
 opinions and there were many disputes and some hard fights 
 on the floors of the Capitol at Washington. Violent speeches 
 were made by both parties, and some of the 
 Quarre s in members did not keep to words. One pas- 
 
 Congress ^ ^ 
 
 sionate man from South Carolina attacked 
 Senator Sumner for making a speech he did not like, and 
 beat him over the head with a cane until he was half dead. 
 Others fought duels and tried to kill one another. It is 
 always that way when men's passions are worked up ; they 
 cannot keep themselves to words. 
 
 While this was going on a remarkable book was written 
 by a woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was called 
 "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and it told the story of a slave in a 
 way that made millions of people read it, and changed thous- 
 ands of them into abolitionists. Some of you may have read 
 this book or seen its story played on the stage. If not, and 
 
THE INDIANS AND THE NEGROES 125 
 
 if you wish to know what slavery was like, I should advise 
 you to buy and read it, for it tells a very thrilling story of 
 life among the slaves. 
 
 Some of the abolitionists wanted slavery done away with 
 altogether. Others wanted it kept where it was, and tried to 
 prevent it from spreading to new states. But the owners 
 of slaves said they had the right to take them where they 
 pleased, and that there ought to be as many slave states as 
 free states. This led to a fierce fight with words in the hall of 
 Congress, and in time to a fight with firearms elsewhere. 
 
 One of the western territories, named Kansas, was nearly 
 ready to be made into a state, and both parties tried to get 
 possession of it. Emigrants hurried there from the North 
 with their wagons and plows and began to build towns and 
 lay out farms. Slave owners came from Missouri with their 
 slaves. Each side tried to capture the new 
 state, and soon fighting began ; rifles were fired y^ans^s *"^ 
 and men were killed. The town of Lawrence, 
 settled by the abolitionists, was attacked and plundered. 
 Then a party of abolitionists, led by an old man named John 
 Brown, attacked the slave holders and killed several of them. 
 Afterwards he led his men into Missouri, destroyed much 
 property, and set free a number of slaves. All this made 
 great excitement in the country. 
 
 I have not told you the whole story of John Brown. The 
 old man thought so much about the wrongs of the slaves that 
 he became half insane on that subject. He thought that if 
 Congress would do nothing for them they ought to fight for 
 their own freedom, and that all they wanted was somebody to 
 show them the way. And he made up his mind th it he was 
 the man chosen to lead them to freedom. He talked it over 
 with his neighbors until he got about twenty men to think 
 the same way, then he set out to put his wild plan into effect. 
 
126 THE INDIANS AND THE NEGROES 
 
 John Brown must have been a good talker to be able to 
 get any men to follow him on that wild scheme. One night, 
 in October, 1859, he appeared with some men at Harper's 
 Ferry, on the Potomac River. Here there was a United 
 States arsenal, and near by were many slaves, whom he 
 expected to arm out of the arsenal and lead against their 
 masters. He thought he would soon have an army of blacks 
 to follow him. 
 
 John Brown was a brave man, but he was not a wise one, 
 and did not understand very well the spirit of the blacks. He 
 seized the arsenal and called upon the slaves to rise and fight 
 for freedom. If they had been Indians he might soon have 
 raised an army, but the blacks are quiet and 
 g^^j. peaceful, and most of them were satisfied with 
 
 their masters, so not one of them came. What 
 did come was a party of soldiers, who soon took the arsenal 
 and had Brown and most of his men prisoners. John Brown 
 was hanged, with six of his men, and that was the end of his 
 wild attempt to make the slaves rise against their masters. 
 
 All he did was to make the bitter feeling between North 
 and South stronger than ever; but in the war that followed 
 many of the soldiers marched to battle with a song to the 
 memory of old John Brown : 
 
 "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground ; 
 His soul is marching on." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Abraham Lincoln and the Freedom 
 
 of the Slave 
 
 WISH to tell you something now about a poor 
 little boy who was born nearly a hundred years 
 ago in the backwoods of Kentucky, He lived 
 in a mea^i little log house whose furniture was 
 chopped out of the trees with the axe, and when 
 he went to his bed of leaves in the loft he had to climb up a 
 row of wooden pins driven into the logs. He had rough 
 clothes to wear and poor food to eat, and had to work very 
 hard, but for all that he was a happy little chap, for he knew 
 no better way of living, and he had a good kind mother who 
 thought the world of him. 
 
 He did not have much chance to go to school, but he 
 went long enough to learn how to read and write, and after 
 that he taught himself He would sit on the floor on winter 
 nights and read and write by the light of the fire, for candles 
 were not to be had. He had only a few books, but they were 
 good ones, and he read them over and over till 
 he knew the best thing^s in them by heart. He .,, ^ ^ 
 
 o -^ Western Boy 
 
 had no paper nor pencils, and when he wanted 
 to write or cipher he had to do it with charcoal on the back 
 of the wooden fire-shovel. When it was full of words or 
 figures he scraped them off and had a clean surface to work 
 on again. I am afraid that many of you would not have be- 
 come scholars under such conditions, but this little fellow was 
 very ambitious and was determined to learn. 
 
 127 
 
128 LINCOLN AND THE FREEDOM OF THE SLA VE 
 
 The poor boy who had to study by the Hght of the 
 kitchen fire, in time came to be a great man. His name was 
 Abraham Lincoln. He worked with his father on the farm and 
 in the woods, and nobody could swing an axe better than he. 
 When he grew up he became big and strong, being more 
 than six feet high, and no man in the country could beat him 
 in cutting down trees and splitting them into rails. 
 
 But he did not intend to spend all his life in the woods. 
 
 He kept on reading and studying, till he got to be the best 
 
 scholar in the country around. He tried different things. He 
 
 went on a flat-boat down the river to New Orleans ; he became 
 
 a clerk in a country store, and after a while he 
 
 Lincoln Studies , .^11 tt ■ . 1 1 
 
 L^^ began to study law. He was quiet and good- 
 
 natured, and did not care to fight, but once 
 he was attacked by a bully named Jack Armstrong and 
 whipped him so quickly that the fighters thought it best to 
 let Abe Lincoln alone. 
 
 When Lincoln got older he kept a store of his own. 
 But he paid more attention to his books than his customers, 
 so he got into debt and the store broke up. Then he kept a 
 post-ofhce, and after that he learned how to survey land and 
 spent some years at that. All this time he was studying law, 
 for he had made up his mind to be a lawyer. All the people 
 liked him, for he would help anybody he could, and he knew 
 so many funny stories, and told them so well, that no one was 
 better company than he. 
 
 Abe Lincoln was born in Kentucky, but his father soon 
 moved to Indiana, and afterwards to Illinois. When he went 
 there it had very few people, but they kept coming, and got 
 thicker every year. Illinois became a State, with its governor 
 and legislature, and in time young Lincoln's neighbors liked 
 him so well and thought him such a scholar, that they elected 
 him to the legislature to help make their laws. The State 
 
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LINCOLN AND THE FREEDOM OF THE SLAVE 129 
 
 Capitol was a hundred miles away, but he could not afford 
 to ride, so he walked all that distance, with his pack on his 
 back. 
 
 That was uphill work, was it not ? Not many men have 
 come up so soon from a backwoods hut to a statehouse. But 
 it shows what men can do when they have the brains and the 
 push. It was intellect and energy which carried Abe Lincoln 
 that far, and which were to carry him much farther. And with 
 all this he was one of the kindest-hearted men 
 
 ,1, Tjr\ 1 u -Ji. Lincoln's Klnd= 
 
 that ever lived. Once, when he was name to . 
 
 ' '^ heartedness 
 
 court in his best clothes, he saw a pig stuck fast 
 in a mud-hole. He did not want to spoil his clothes, so he 
 rode on. But he could not help thinking of poor piggy, and 
 after he had gone two miles he turned back and lifted the 
 poor animal out of the hole. The pig trotted away grunting 
 his thanks, and Lincoln rode on looking as if he had been 
 pulled out of a mud-hole himself. 
 
 Now I think I must quit talking about Abe Lincoln and 
 talk about Abraham Lincoln. The rail-splitter had earned the 
 right to have his full name. He was sent to the legislature 
 for many years, and proved to be a good speech-maker, and 
 just the man the people wanted. And he got to be a lawyer 
 and quite likely a good one. He did not make much money, 
 for he would not take pay from the poor, and would not take 
 a case if he did not think it was a just one, but he managed to 
 live. In the end, the people of his district elected him to 
 Congress, and he became one of the law-makers for the whole 
 country. 
 
 This was in 1846, when he was thirty-seven years old. 
 While he was in Congress the war with Mexico went on, and 
 there was talk about slaves and slavery. The people of the 
 South wanted to take their slaves into the new states and 
 territories that had been obtained from Mexico, but Lincoln 
 
I30 LINCOLN AND THE FREEDOM OF THE SLAVE 
 
 thought they had no right to do so, and he said so in his 
 speeches. He did not want the country to interfere with 
 slavery where it was, but he thought it had gone far enough 
 and ought to be stopped from going farther. He had become 
 a very good and sensible speaker, and people listened to him, 
 and in time his name became known through all the country. 
 There were two parties in the North at that time, one 
 that did not believe in slavery and one that did. Abraham 
 Lincoln came to be one of the leaders in the first party. 
 Another fine speaker in Illinois, named Stephen A. Douglas, 
 was one of the leaders of the second party, — the one that 
 believed in slavery. Douglas was in the Senate of the United 
 States, but when a new election came up Lin- 
 
 The Leaders of i c l.\ cc j i.u i. 
 
 X.- 1- r» _*• coin ran for the omce, and there was a e^reat 
 
 the Two Parties ' o 
 
 contest in Illinois. These two men went from 
 town to town, making speeches to great crowds of people, 
 Douglas for slavery, Lincoln against it. There was splendid 
 speech-making on both sides, and the people listened as if 
 they had never heard any one speak before. But the party 
 of Douglas was the strongest, and he was sent back to the 
 Senate. 
 
 Thouo^h Lincoln did not Qfet to the Senate, he did not 
 waste his time. His speeches made him famous over the 
 whole country. He had said so many strong things against 
 slavery that the anti-slavery people looked on him as their 
 best man, and when, in i860, the time came to elect a new 
 President, the rail-splitter of Illinois was the favorite of the 
 Republican party. 
 
 That great debate between Lincoln and Douglas in Illi- 
 nois had been read by millions of people, and when the 
 nominations were made, Lincoln was drawn as the Republican 
 candidate and Douglas as the Democratic one. Down South 
 two other candidates were nominated, but when the election 
 
LINCOLN AND THE FREEDOM OF THE SLA VE 131 
 
 came off Lincoln was found to have beaten them all. Out of 
 the three hundred and three electoral votes he received one 
 hundred and eighty, or more than one-half Abraham Lin- 
 coln, the rail-splitter of Illinois, was elected President of the 
 United States. From the log hut, with its furniture chopped 
 out by the axe, he was sent to the splendid White House at 
 Washington, to stand as the equal of the kings and emperors 
 of Europe. You may see from that what brains and honesty 
 can do in a country like America. 
 
 Poor Abraham Lincoln ! he was great but he was not 
 happy. For four years and more he was President, but they 
 were years of trouble and anxiety, and he was killed by an 
 assassin just when his troubles were over and peace and hap- 
 piness about to begin. It is not always the 
 best thinp" in the world to strive for neatness, ^. ^."", ,f,** 
 
 o fc> ' the Civil War 
 
 if one wishes to enjoy life. High station brings 
 its troubles, and greatness and happiness do not always go 
 together. But for all that I expect every one of you would 
 like to become President of the United States and take your 
 chances of having a happy time. 
 
 Why was not Lincoln happy, do you ask ? He had good 
 reason not to be. He had no sooner become President than 
 war broke out between the South and the North, and it kept 
 on almost as long as he lived. The leaders in the South, 
 when they saw how strong the anti-slavery party was, became 
 afraid that their slaves might be taken from them, and made 
 up their mind to break up the Union of the States. And 
 when the North said that the Union should be preserved, both 
 sides took their arms and began to fight, and soon there was 
 a terrible war. 
 
 You may be sure that it was not pleasant to be President 
 in such a case as this. No end of mistakes were made and 
 poor Lincoln was blamed by many for them all. And it hurt 
 
132 • LINCOLN AND THE FREEDOM OF THE SLA VE 
 
 his good heart to see so many of the people killed and 
 wounded in battle. But he was so kind and patient, so wise 
 and honest, that the people grew to love him and the soldiers 
 fought all the better for thinking that they had so noble a man 
 at their head. In the end almost every one began to think 
 that we never had a greater or better President. 
 
 The question of slavery troubled Lincoln. He did not 
 
 want to interfere with it, for he said that we were fighting for 
 
 the Union, not for slavery. He did not do so till two years 
 
 had passed, and he saw that slavery was helping 
 
 r. \^^ ^- the South in the war. Then he declared that 
 
 Declaration 
 
 the slaves should be free. That was a great 
 declaration, equal in its way to our Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. For it set free with one stroke of the pen many more 
 human beings than were set free by the Revolutionary War. 
 But it made the enemies of the President hate him more 
 than ever, and after the war was over and peace had come 
 back to the land, one of these men shot him dead as he sat in 
 a box at the theatre, looking at a play on the stage. It was 
 a cruel and dreadful deed, and one that did more harm than 
 good to the South, for Abraham Lincoln was one of the best 
 friends the South had. The President died for his country, 
 and the people mourned him as if each of them had lost one 
 of his own family. He died a martyr to the cause to which 
 he had given so much of his life. But slavery was dead in 
 the United States ; the shot that killed Abraham Lincoln 
 broke the last fetter of the slave. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The Great Civi! War in America 
 
 AVE any of you ever dropped a seed in the ground 
 and then, to your surprise, found a troublesome 
 plant growing up ? That is much like what the 
 people did who voted for Abraham Lincoln for 
 President. The votes which they dropped into 
 the ballot box were the seeds of trouble, and the plant which 
 sprang from them was a dreadful war, one of the greatest 
 wars of the century. If they had known what was to come I 
 fancy many of them would have cut off their hands rather 
 than drop that vote. But war often comes without giving 
 warning, and to most of our people this war gave no warning 
 at all. It came like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky. 
 
 But though the storm seemed to come suddenly, it had 
 been long gathering. The dispute about slavery had been 
 growing worse for many years, and when the anti-slavery 
 party became strong enough to elect a presi- 
 dent, many of the people of the South thought 5* t % 
 the end had come. They believed that laws 
 would be passed to rob them of their slaves or to injure them 
 in other ways, and thought that if they wanted to save them- 
 selves now was the time to draw out of the Union and estab- 
 lish a nation of their own. 
 
 V^hat they did was to hold conventions and pass resolu- 
 tions to secede from the Union. Then they took possession 
 of the property of the government in the South, and when 
 Major Anderson, of Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, 
 
 9 133 
 
134 THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 
 
 refused to give up the fort to them, they fired on it with 
 cannon until it was a heap of ruins and the Major had to 
 surrender. 
 
 ^ What was the North doing all this time ? Well, it was 
 
 doing very little of anything. It was simply waiting and 
 
 hoping. But when the Southerners fired on Fort Sumter 
 
 there was a change. The stars and stripes had 
 
 ar rea s been fired on ! The flag- of the nation had been 
 
 Out ^ 
 
 insulted ! It must be avenged ! That was the 
 cry. All through the North the people were full of anger, 
 and when President Lincoln called for troops he could have 
 had half a million if he had asked for them. 
 
 Peace was at an end. War had begun. Everywhere there 
 was mustering of soldiers and marching of troops. Mothers 
 wept over their sons as they set out for the field of battle, and 
 the soldier boys had wet eyes, though they tried their best to 
 look brave. Sweethearts kissed and bade good-bye, fearing 
 they would never see one another again. And many of them 
 never did, for the cruel hand of war laid many thousands of 
 soldiers dead on the battlefield. North and South this went 
 on, and it was not long before there were two large armies in 
 the field, and the rattle of the musket and the roar of the 
 cannon were heard, and men began to fall and die for the 
 cause which they thought the right. 
 
 This is not a history of the United States, so I shall not 
 tell you all that took place in this war. It was full of events 
 ' — of battles and marches and sieges, fighting by land and 
 fighting by sea, wild rides of cavalry and fierce rushes of 
 infantry, and all that makes war terrible and grand. For four 
 years it went on, from 1861 to 1865, and in that time there 
 were hundreds of battles and skirmishes, and in many places 
 the ground was thick with the graves of the heroes who had 
 died for their cause. 
 
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 135 
 
 Washington was the capital of the Union and Richmond 
 the capital of the seceded states, or the "Confederate States 
 of America," as they were called, and in Virginia, between 
 these two cities, the hardest and bloodiest battles took place. 
 
 But there were many terrible battles in the West and the 
 South, and soldiers kept gathering until there were more than 
 a million men fighting in the field, and hundreds of thousands 
 of mothers, sisters and wives were weeping for their loved 
 ones at home. 
 
 Both sides won victories, but the North had the most 
 money and men, and if you know anything about war you 
 must know that it is generally money and men that win. 
 The war went on for two years, and then, about the 4th of 
 July, 1863, the North gained two very important victories. 
 One of these was on the battle-field of Gettysburg, in Penn- 
 sylvania. Here for three days two great armies 
 fought until there was hardly a foot of the vkksburg-^ ^" 
 ground without its pool of blood, and then, on 
 July 4th, the army of the South marched away in defeat. 
 Victory remained with the North. And on the same day the 
 city of Vicksburg, in Mississippi, which had long been be- 
 sieged, surrendered to General Grant, and twenty-seven 
 thousand soldiers were made prisoners of war. That was a 
 fatal 4th of July for the South. It fought on for two years 
 more, but there was little hope, for it after that day. 
 
 There were many good soldiers and able officers in the 
 war, but in time two of them came to the head — ^Ulysses S. 
 Grant in the North and Robert E. Lee in the South, two of 
 the ablest soldiers of the century. Lee was a brilliant fighter 
 and v/on victories by daring and dash. Grant did not have 
 so much dash, but he had more of the bulldog, and when he 
 took hold he never let go. William T. Sherman and Philip 
 H. Sheridan were other famous generals of the North. Some 
 
136 THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 
 
 of you may have read the stirring poem of "Sheridan's Ride," 
 or seen the picture of him on his great galloping horse, riding 
 from Winchester to the battle-field. Joseph E. Johnston and 
 Thomas J. Jackson were famous generals of the South. 
 Likely enough you have heard the name of "Stonewall" 
 Jackson. It was given him because he stood with his men 
 on the battle-field like a wall of stone. 
 
 Now we must go on to the year 1864, when Grant was 
 made Commander-in-chief of the armies of the North and 
 came to Virginia to take charge there. General Lee opposed 
 him at the head of the army of Virginia. After that there was 
 From the ^^ more dashing about and fighting battles 
 
 Wilderness to here and there, with little to come from them 
 Petersburg except the killing of men. The bulldog had 
 
 come and the hold-fast game began. Grant made a plan and 
 stuck to it. Richmond was his goal and for Richmond he 
 pushed. But he had a hard and desperate fighter to deal 
 with, and for a whole year Lee held him back. 
 
 There were terrible battles, beginning in the wild country 
 called the Wilderness, and keeping on down nearly to Rich- 
 mond. Every step of the way was strewn with the dead. 
 Grant then crossed the James River and tried to get to Rich- 
 mond from the South, but Lee met him here, too, and both 
 sides began to dig earthworks and mount cannon. After that 
 the battles in the field for a long time stopped, and it became 
 a game of the spade and the cannon-ball. This is known as 
 the siege of Petersburg, for the earthworks were built before 
 the town of that name. 
 
 That was the way the war went on in Virginia. In the 
 South, it went in a different way. General Sherman was in 
 command there, and in his way he was as brilliant as General 
 Lee. South into Georgia he marched, now fighting a battle, 
 now slipping around the enemy and pushing on. At length, 
 
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 137 
 
 he reached the city of Atlanta, the arsenal of Georgia. This 
 he got behind, and cut off its supplies, so that it had to 
 surrender. In that wonderful march he fought ten battles and 
 lost thirty thousand men. 
 
 General Hood, the Confederate commander at Atlanta, 
 had to get out of that city in a hurry when Sherman cut off 
 his food supply, and he marched off in haste to Tennessee, 
 thinking he would serve Sherman in the same way, and force 
 him to retreat by cutting his line of supplies. But Sherman 
 was not that kind of man. He let Hood go. Marching 
 General Thomas, one of the best officers of the Through 
 North, was at Nashville, Tennessee, and could Q^®**s»a 
 take care of him. Do you wish to know what Thomas did ? 
 He whipped Hood's army so completely that there was no 
 army left ; it was broken into a thousand pieces and never 
 came together again. 
 
 Meanwhile Sherman was making the most brilliant march 
 of the whole war. He cut loose from Atlanta, and marched 
 onward into Georgia, without troubling himself about sup- 
 plies. Georgia was a rich country, and he thought he could 
 easily find enough there to feed his army. For a whole 
 month he and his army were lost. No one in the North 
 knew anything about them. They seemed swallowed up like 
 Pharoah's army in the Red Sea. Then, just before Christmas, 
 they came to the coast at the city of Savannah, and sent the 
 glad news North. They had marched in safety through the 
 heart of the South. 
 
 You must see now that the war was near its end. The 
 South had done its best but was too weak to do much more. 
 From Savannah Sherman marched to North Carolina through 
 the very centre of the seceded States. He may have been 
 coming to Grant's help, but Grant did not need him, for in 
 April, 1865, he got round the rear of Lee's earthworks and 
 
138 THE GREAT CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA 
 
 Richmond lay open before him. Lee and his army could do 
 no more. They marched in haste away, but Grant followed 
 in greater haste still, and on April 9th General Lee was forced 
 to surrender, with his army, to his great antagonist. The long 
 and dreadful war was at an end. 
 
 It was a great war, the greatest of the century after the 
 wars of Napoleon. What bad and what good came of it? 
 Well, there was bad enough — bloodshed and ruin, and burn- 
 ing of towns, and tearing up of railroads, and sinking of 
 ships, and all the terrors which war brings about. But there 
 was good also, for some great questions were settled, and will 
 not trouble us again. 
 
 We know that the question of slavery was the real cause 
 of the war. But the immediate cause of it was the secession 
 of the South and the firing on Fort Sumter. President Lin- 
 
 '& 
 
 Slavery the 
 
 coin said he w^as fighting to save the Union 
 
 ^ f w r ^^^ ^^ ^^^P ^^ slaves, and he took good care 
 
 not to interfere with slavery until he saw that it 
 was giving strength to the South. Then he wrote a declara- 
 tion of the freedom of the slave, and when he signed his 
 name to that great document he touched the true cause of the 
 war. If the North succeeded the slaves would be free. 
 
 When we look back on the Civil War we see that two 
 great good things came from it. It gave freedom to the slaves 
 and strength to the Union. Every one says this now. North 
 and South alike, for the South has learned that slavery did it 
 more harm than good, and would not have it to-day at any 
 price. And North and South alike are proud of the Union 
 which the war made so strong, and which has enabled the 
 United States to take its place as one of the greatest and 
 most powerful nations of the world. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The Battle of the Ironclads and the 
 Birth of the New Navy 
 
 OOM ! went the great guns. Crash ! went the 
 mighty balls. The waters spouted up as if a 
 herd of whales were at play when the huge shells 
 plunged into their depths. The most wonder- 
 ful battle the great ocean had ever seen was 
 going on in Hampton Roads, the lower part of Chesapeake 
 Bay. Two queer-looking vessels, both of them covered with 
 thick plates of iron, had come together, and were battering at 
 one another at a terrible rate. 
 
 No such vessels had ever been seen before. One of them 
 was like a great floating house with a sloping roof And this 
 roof was covered with thick bars of iron, out of which, on both 
 sides, peeped the black muzzles of great guns. 
 The other was twice as odd. Nearly all that yg^ggis 
 could be seen of it was a long, flat, iron deck, 
 rising only a foot or two out of the water. In the middle of 
 this was a barrel-shaped afl'air of thick iron, twenty feet wide 
 and nine feet high, with port holes for two mighty guns. 
 
 They who saw this queer craft called it a "cheese box on 
 a raft," and that is very much what it looked like. But instead 
 of cheese, it held men and cannon and powder and balls, and 
 was a wonderful fighting machine, the strangest that any man 
 had ever seen. 
 
 139 
 
I40 THE FIRST IRONCLADS AND THE NEW NA VY 
 
 The first mentioned of these odd craft was named the 
 *' Merrimac." It was an old navy vessel, which the Confederates 
 at Norfolk had roofed over and plated with iron bars. The 
 other, called the "Monitor," had been built for the North at 
 New York by a Swedish inventor named John Ericsson. 
 And here they both were, ready to do battle for the North 
 and the South. It was now the 8th of March, 1862. 
 
 On the previous day the "Merrimac" had come into 
 Hampton Roads and found nothing there but a number of 
 old-fashioned wooden war vessels, of the kind which had been 
 used everywhere up to that time. One of these it sunk, and 
 another was set on fire and blown up. The next morning it 
 came out to destroy the rest of them. But this 
 
 of iron=ciads ^^^^ ^°^ ^^ ^^^^ ^ j^^' ^"^^ there lay the "Moni- 
 tor," like little David waiting for big Goliath. 
 And instead of flinging pebbles at the giant, it was ready to 
 hurl great iron balls, eleven inches in diameter. This giant, 
 you see, had an iron forehead, and it would take something 
 heavier than a pebble to do him any harm. 
 
 And now began a terrible battle. The "Merrimac" had 
 ten guns, but they were not nearly so large as the two of 
 the "Monitor." The huge monster steamed up and fired all 
 the guns on one side at the little craft. Likely enough the 
 Confederate captain thought he would send the cheese box 
 to the bottom, but it shook off" his balls as if they had been 
 fired from a pea-shooter. Most of them plunged into the 
 water of the bay and did not touch the " Monitor" at all. 
 
 That was not the way with the balls of the " Monitor." 
 She had a big mark to shoot at and could not easily miss. 
 And her great iron globes, nearly a foot through, made the 
 huge ship tremble and reel when they struck her sturdy sides. 
 But none of them went through. The iron was too thick 
 for that. 
 
THE FIRST IRONCLADS AND THE NEW NAVY 141 
 
 For three hours these two strange fighting machines 
 hammered away at each other. At one time the " Merrimac" 
 made a fierce rush at the " Monitor," Hke a mad bull rushing 
 at a boy. The captain of the Goliath hoped to force the little 
 David down to the bottom of the bay. The huge bow ran up 
 on the low deck of the "Monitor" and drove it down deep 
 under the waves. But the engines were reversed and the 
 " Monitor" slid away backward and came up again, while the 
 great antagonist swashed down heavily into the waters of the 
 bay. And so it went on, hour after hour, until in the end the 
 "Merrimac" left the fight and steamed away. The "Mon- 
 itor" let her go. Both of them, I fancy, had all the fighting 
 they wanted for that day. But the "Merrimac" ^1,^ Fate of 
 had the worst of it and never came back again. "Monitor" and 
 They had both fought their first and their last "^^errimac" 
 battle ; for soon after, when the Confederates left Norfolk, 
 the "Merrimac" was blown up and sank, and the "Monitor" 
 ended her career by going to the bottom of the ocean in a 
 storm. Like two actors on the stage, they played their part 
 and went out of sight behind the scenes. 
 
 Do you wish to know what part it was they had played ? 
 I can tell you it was a very important part ; they were leading 
 actors in the great drama of war. I have told you about Nel- 
 son, the English admiral, and his wonderful victories. Those 
 were fought with wooden sailing ships, and with cannon that 
 were like popguns beside those used to-day. Then came the 
 time of steamships and larger guns But they were wooden 
 vessels still, like those which the "Merrimac" sent to the 
 bottom in Hampton Roads. When the American Civil War 
 broke out the time had come for stronger ships, so the iron- 
 coated "Monitor" and "Merrimac" were built And the 
 battle about which you have just read was the first ever fought 
 between ironclad ships. 
 
142 THE FIRST IRONCLADS AND THE_ NEW NA VY 
 
 You may be sure that this battle was a useful lesson for 
 both the North and the South. Both sides began to build 
 ships with iron overcoats. In the West the river steamers 
 were covered with iron and ran past the strongest river forts. 
 In the East new monitors were built Down South the Con- 
 federates built strong ironclads. They had both learned their 
 lesson and were making the most of it. 
 
 But you must not think that all the naval battles of the 
 war were fought with ironclads. One of the greatest of them 
 was fought with the old style ships. Just after the fight be- 
 tween the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac" a fleet of wooden 
 vessels sailed into the Mississippi River and steamed up stream 
 towards New Orleans. It was commanded by Commodore 
 Farragut, as great a sailor and bold a fighter as England's 
 famous Nelson. I can tell you he had a terrible 
 arragu in e ^^^^ before him. The Confederates had built 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 strong forts on both sides of the river, and they 
 had stretched an iron chain from bank to bank to hold the 
 ships until the forts could sink them. Then they had fire- 
 rafts to float down on them, and two great ironclads, one of 
 them a ram, which they expected would- crack open the wooden 
 vessels like so many egg-shells. But they did not have a 
 Farragut, and that made all the difference. 
 
 There has not often been such a battle as that. The 
 mortar boats, under Commander Porter, had their masts cov- 
 ered with green boughs until they looked like a piece out of 
 the forest, and for hours they hurled their great shells into the 
 forts two miles away. Day after day this w^as kept up, and 
 night after night fire-rafts came blazing and roaring down the 
 stream, seeking to burn the fleet. But they were caught and 
 run ashore, and left to burn themselves out on the mud. 
 
 After a while the bold Farragut got tired of this. It was 
 too slow for him. So one dark night he set out with his 
 
THE FIRST IRONCLADS AND THE NEW NA VY 143 
 
 wooden vessels up stream. The chain had been broken and 
 the river was clear, but the forts and the ships were there, and 
 he had the hottest kind of a fight. Through the darkness of 
 the night flashed the guns of the forts, and the silence was 
 broken by a terrible roar. The fleet replied with all its guns, 
 pouring shot and shell into the forts. It seemed like the 
 thunder and lightning of a frightful storm. And in the midst 
 of it all down came a blazing fire-raft against the " Hartford," 
 Farragut's flagship, which was in a moment in a blaze. By 
 great good luck they got clear of the raft and put out the 
 dangerous flames. 
 
 Then came down the great ram "Manassas" and half 
 a dozen of gunboats with iron beaks, and along with them a 
 huge iron-clad floating battery, the "Louisiana." It looked 
 as if Farragut's fleet w^ould be chopped into mince-meat, but 
 things did not turn out that way. Before many 
 minutes most of the g^unboats were blazing:, and ^,. ^*!'^L 1, 
 
 c> t>' Night Battle 
 
 the " Manassas " was run ashore in flames, and 
 the battle was at an end. It had lasted only an hour and a 
 half, but never had there been a fiercer fight for so short a 
 time. On up stream went Farragut, and before the day was 
 over New Orleans was his. As he went up the stream a fleet 
 of steamers and ironclads came floating down, all in flames. 
 That night's work made him an admiral. 
 
 This was not the only great victory won by Farragut. 
 Two years afterwards he appeared in Mobile Bay with a fleet 
 made up of wooden ships and monitors. He had now three 
 forts to fight and a great ironclad ram, the "Tennessee." 
 And the bottom of the bay was sown thick with torpedoes ; 
 one of which exploded under a monitor and tore such a hole 
 in its bottom that it went down, with its crew, into the mud. 
 
 But Farragut was not the man to stop for rams or forts. 
 He went into the battle tied fast to the rigging of his ship, 
 
144 ^-^^ FIRST IRONCLADS AND THE NEW NA VY 
 
 with the cannon-balls booming past. He wanted to see, and 
 took the chance of being blown into atoms. A man like that 
 cannot be beaten. The ram was captured, and the victory 
 was his. 
 
 The Confederates, you may well think, did not have much 
 luck with their ironclads. They spent a great deal of time 
 and money on them, and got very little good in return. But 
 they had one vessel which was more lucky. This was the 
 privateer "Alabama," which sailed through all seas, and 
 captured and burned more than sixty American merchant 
 The "Alabama" vessels. It was huutcd cast and west, but it 
 and the was not met with until June, 1864, when the 
 
 "Kearsarge" ship-of-war " Kcarsargc " found it in a port of 
 France. When the "Alabama" came out there was a fierce 
 fight between the two ships, while thousands of people looked 
 on from the French coast. In the end the "Alabama" went 
 to the bottom and the "Kearsarge" won the victory. Ship- 
 owners were glad enough, for that one vessel had destroyed 
 more than ten million dollars' worth of ships and cargoes. 
 
 I might go on and on, telling you about battles on the 
 coast and in the rivers of the United States, about daring 
 runs past batteries and fierce bombardments of forts. But I 
 have something else to speak of which seems more important 
 just here, and this is that all the nations of the world learned 
 a lesson from the sea-fights of the American war. For many 
 centuries they had been fighting with wooden ships and little 
 guns. Now they saw that the day of iron ships and great 
 guns had come, and on all sides they began to throw their 
 wooden ships aside and build new vessels covered with thick 
 plates of iron or steel, and armed with great breech-loading 
 guns, that thought nothing of hurling a heavy cannon-ball for 
 seven or eight miles. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 How Japan and China Woke Out of 
 Their Long Sleep 
 
 OW let us take a long journey, or a long jump, 
 whichever you like best. You must know that 
 there are two ways of traveling, by body and by 
 mind. When the body travels it has to go by 
 train, or by ship, or in some other slow way. 
 When the mind travels it can go by lightning express. It 
 thinks nothing of making a jump over ten thousand miles. 
 As we have a long ways to go in this chapter, and not much 
 time to spare, we shall have to do it in the mind, and leave 
 the body behind. 
 
 So far you have read only of things that took place in 
 Europe and America. But these are not all the world. Out- 
 side of them lie the great continents of Asia and Africa, which 
 are full of human beings. These are not wide- 
 awake people like those of Europe and of our fh^c^T^^ 
 own country, but they are not fast asleep, and 
 one of these far-off nations has wakened up wonderfully of 
 late years. We shall certainly have to see what these dis- 
 tant folks were doing in the nineteenth century. 
 
 Those of my youthful readers who live in any of our 
 great cities must have seen certain odd-dressed yellow-faced 
 persons walking about, or ironing clothes in shops with such 
 signs as "Yong Wang," "Sam Ram," and the like. These 
 are known as Chinese. They came from a country which has 
 nearly 400,000,000 of such people — many more than any 
 
 145 
 
146 JAPAN AND CHINA 
 
 other country in the world. Why, they are so numerous that 
 many millions of them do not live on land at all, but in boats 
 on the water. They seem to have been crowded off the shore. 
 
 That country is named China. It takes up much of the 
 eastern part of Asia, and fronts on the Pacific Ocean. Out in 
 the ocean, some hundreds of miles away from China, are a 
 number of islands well filled with people. These islands are 
 named Japan. If you will make a leap with me to those 
 far-off countries, China and Japan, we will see what was going 
 on there in the nineteenth century. 
 
 The people of China and Japan did not like white men. 
 They were rather afraid of them, for they had seen something 
 of their customs. "These people of Europe think they own 
 the earth," they said. " If we let them inside our front door 
 they will soon want the whole house. Our ways and our 
 religion will not mix with their ways and their 
 
 Locked Doors in i- • i j i ^ i ^ i >- 
 
 rw 3 I relisfion, so we had best keep to ourselves. 
 
 China and Japan o ' r 
 
 They locked their front doors and said to 
 the whites who came to call upon them, "You cannot come 
 in, we are not receiving visitors." In other words, they 
 closed their ports against all foreign ships, and would not let 
 any strangers enter their country. 
 
 The white people did not like this. They were not used 
 to being shut out. They wanted to send their ships and goods 
 to all parts of the. world, and did not care to be turned away 
 from the front doors of these two rich countries of the yellow 
 folks. And as the century went on, and steamships took the 
 place of sailing vessels, and guns grew larger, and they had 
 more goods to sell, they began to knock louder at the doors 
 of China and Japan. 
 
 It was the United States that first made Japan open her 
 door. Her people were very stubborn, but they found the 
 Americans more stubborn still. In 1854 Commodore Perry 
 
JAPAN AND CHINA 147 
 
 sailed into the Bay of Yeddo with an American fleet. The 
 Jap^inese were angry and worried when they saw these ships 
 where no foreign ships had dared to come before. They tried 
 to scare them off. Then they coaxed them to leave. But 
 Perry was very determined, and they blustered and coaxed in 
 vain. He had come there to make a treaty of commerce, he 
 said, and he would not go away without it. The people of 
 Japan did not know what was for their own good, and he had 
 come to teach them. 
 
 I do not think he said just that, but he talked with them 
 and gave them some fine presents and received some fine 
 presents in return, and when he sailed away he had the treaty 
 in his ship. Japan had opened its door a crack, 
 and into this crack the nations bcQ^an to push, ^ ' . , 
 
 •^ i ' Comes to Japan 
 
 and soon the door was opened its full width. 
 
 That is, the other nations got treaties also, and ships loaded 
 
 with foreign goods were quickly sailing into the ports of Japan. 
 
 That was the beginning of a remarkable event, a com- 
 plete revolution in the island empire. Japan did not do 
 things by halves. Not only the goods of Europe and America 
 were let in, but the new ideas came in with them. The civili- 
 zation of the West made its way Vv^ith the most surprising 
 rapidity into this old land. Books, industries, inventions, 
 were all gladly received. Telegraph lines were built, railroads 
 were laid, factories sprang up here and there, rifles and can- 
 non v/ere bought to arm their soldiers, great steel-clad war- 
 ships were built and brought to Japan, and in a very few 
 years the whole country was transformed. The island empire 
 had been like a tree in March, an empty show of bare boughs ; 
 now it was like a tree in May, covered with leaves and blos- 
 soms and with splendid promise of fruit. 
 
 The revolution did not stop half way, the very govern- 
 ment was overturned. For centuries the emperor of Japan 
 
148 JAPAN AND CHINA 
 
 had been of no more account than a Christmas doll, and a 
 general of the army, called the Tycoon, had ruled the coun- 
 try. Now the Mikado, the true emperor, came to the head 
 again, and down to his proper place went the Tycoon. And 
 that is not all. In 1889 the emperor gave up his absolute 
 power and told the people they might have a Congress in 
 which they could make their own laws. Every man over 
 twenty-five was given the right to vote. That was the most 
 wonderful thing of all. So far as I know it is the only time 
 in all history that an absolute monarch gave up his autocratic 
 power of his own free will and invited his people to make 
 laws for themselves. 
 
 Never before, indeed, had any country made such a 
 remarkable stride forward. Fifty years ago Japan was like 
 Europe in the dark ages. Now it is one of the most active 
 and wide-awake countries in the world, with its free govern- 
 ment, its railroads, its telegraphs, its schools and universities, 
 its powerful fleet and army, its rich commerce and all that 
 makes a nation great ; and to-day, when we talk of the lead- 
 ing nations of the world, we never forget to name Japan. 
 
 Now let us take a look at China, with its great country 
 and its vast numbers of people. There we find a different 
 story to tell. The Chinese were as obstinate as the Japanese 
 and they VvTre a great deal prouder. They were proud of 
 their old ways, their old books, their old religion and govern- 
 ment and laws, and thought that all the world 
 ^j^j^^ had nothing half so good. The nations of 
 
 Europe and America were mere children beside 
 China, which had been an old nation ages before they were 
 thought of. The idea of these young upstarts coming to 
 teach new things to a gray-haired nation which had been rich 
 in learning thousands of years before they were born ! Such 
 a thing was too ridiculous to be thought of 
 
JAPAN AND CHINA 149 
 
 That is the way China looked at it, and that is the reason 
 it did not take up the civilization of the West as readily as 
 Japan. Its people were too proud and too self-satisfied. But 
 for all that it could not keep out the nineteenth century. No, 
 indeed ! no part of the earth except the north and south poles 
 has been able to keep out the pushing nineteenth century. 
 
 England was the first of the nations to get into China, 
 where she obtained a foothold more than two centuries ago. 
 What she wanted was trade, and she tried a very bad kind of 
 trade, for her ships carried opium to China, just as in later 
 times rum has been carried to Africa. The 
 
 r r-y ■ i- i i -i i • ^ • The Opium War 
 
 emperor 01 Chma did not like this. Opium 
 was a bad thing for his people, who lost their senses from 
 smoking this dangerous drug. So he gave orders that all 
 the opium in Canton should be seized and destroyed, and 
 ^20,000,000 worth of the drug was thrown into the river. 
 
 This made the English furious. They sent their war- 
 ships to China and began what is called the '* Opium War." 
 England was in the wrong, as it often has been ; but in war 
 the wrong often prevails, if it has the best guns ; so China 
 was defeated and had to open five ports to the w^orld's com- 
 merce, and give up to England the large city and fine port of 
 Hong Kong. This was the first step in the opening of China. 
 Twenty years afterwards another war broke out, in which the 
 British and the French joined. In i860, they marched to 
 Peking, the capital of China, forced it to open its gates, and 
 burned the emperor s summer palace, one of the finest build- 
 ings in the whole land. Then more of China was opened to 
 the world's trade. 
 
 In this way the door of China has been opened ; a little 
 
 at a time ; now a small crack and now a larger crack. It was 
 
 not flung open all at once, like the door of Japan, and it is 
 
 far from being wide open yet. In fact, the Chinese are doing 
 10 
 
I50 JAPAN AND CHINA 
 
 their best to shut it again, but I fancy they will not succeed. 
 It is something like trying to shut the gates of a mill-race 
 against a flood. 
 
 Little by little foreign things crept in. In 1876, a rail- 
 road was built a few miles long. The emperor did not like 
 it, but he was afraid to deal with it as he had with the opium. 
 He took a safer plan ; he bought the road, tore up the rails, 
 and stored them away. The next year a telegraph line was 
 built. That was not torn up, and now there are many miles 
 of telegraph in China. Since then, some more 
 ,!...^ ^"'"^ railroads have been laid, but the Chinese do 
 
 of China ' 
 
 not like the iron horse, and they have not 
 much more than a sample of railroad yet. The only way in 
 which they have gone ahead is in buying steamboats for their 
 rivers, and ironclad ships for their navy, and rifles for their 
 soldiers. What they want is not to accept civilization but to 
 fight off civilization. 
 
 War has a wonderful power in waking up a nation. When 
 you come to read much of history you will learn the truth of 
 this. There are some nations which nothing but the boom of 
 the cannon and the crack of the rifle can rouse from their long 
 sleep, and China is one of them. Japan did not need war for 
 this purpose. As soon as its people saw how great a thing 
 civilization is, they took hold of it with a mighty grip. But 
 China saw nothing in it but a nuisance and a trouble, and 
 took it in only at the cannon's mouth. I think there are 
 times when all of us are tired of learning something new and 
 want to be let alone with what we have, and that is the way 
 it was with China. 
 
 Now I must speak of China's greatest war of the cen- 
 tury, one that took place in 1894, only a few years ago. I 
 may call this the "great awakening," for it gave the sleeping 
 empire a very hard shake. This war was with Japan, and 
 
JAPAN AND CHINA 151 
 
 came out of a quarrel about a kingdom to the north, called 
 Corea, which was like a bone that was being fought for by 
 two dogs. 
 
 China was like a great mastiff and Japan like a small- 
 sized bull-dog; or one was a great barnyard fowl and the 
 other like a little game-cock. No doubt, the rulers of China 
 thought they would make short work of this impudent little 
 island empire, whose people were of the same race as them- 
 selves, and not of that terrible white race. They 
 mie^ht have done so forty years before, but ^n^^^^^\^, 
 
 ^ J J ^ China at War 
 
 Japan had now an army of well-drilled and 
 well-armed soldiers, trained in the newest ideas, and it made 
 short work of the sleepy colossus. The bull-dog got its teeth 
 in the throat of the mastiff, and soon shook all the fight out 
 of it. In a very short time little Japan had whipped big 
 China ; it might have tried to swallow it if it had not been so 
 very large. 
 
 Suppose the United States had been beaten in the war 
 with Spain ; what would we have thought ? Would not we 
 have come to the conclusion that we were far behind the age, 
 and that it was time we were learning something new ! Some 
 such notion as this seems to have come into the great, slow 
 brain of China. It had been thoroughly whipped by a little 
 nation of its own kind. It was clear enough that it had a good 
 deal to learn, and that it must give up some of its stubborn 
 pride and go to school to the world if it did not want to be 
 divided up between the nations as Africa has been. 
 
 If any of you read the newspapers closely you will know 
 that the lesson was not lost in China. Railroads were no 
 longer forbidden ; they began to make their way through the 
 " Celestial Kingdom." Steamboats ploughed the waters for 
 a thousand miles up the great Kiang River. Foreign engi- 
 neers began to work the rich coal and iron mines. Factories 
 
152 JAPAN AND CHINA 
 
 sprang up in the foreign settlements, with the best modern 
 machinery. Foreign books were translated and read. Mis- 
 sionaries taught the people in hundreds of places. The 
 ambassadors of the nations were admitted to Peking and 
 received in open audience by the emperor. China was giving 
 way to the pressure of the world, and letting the light of 
 science and invention in. 
 
 But it was only the most advanced thinkers of China 
 who saw the benefit of this. The great masses of the people 
 were full of ignorance and prejudice, and hated the white 
 people bitterly. The best name they had for them was " for- 
 eign devils." Suddenly, in the year 1900, there came a 
 terrible outbreak. A great secret society of the people, called 
 
 the "Boxers," rose and began murdering the 
 Outbreak whites whcrcver they could find them. They 
 
 entered Peking in multitudes, and many of the 
 soldiers joined them in a bloodthirsty attack on the envoys of 
 the foreign powers. Never had such a thing happened be- 
 fore, and all the great nations of the world sent soldiers to 
 China to prevent a terrible crime. These formed an army 
 which moved to Peking and rescued the ministers, but they 
 had to fight hard to get there, and the old nation was stirred 
 up as never before. In this way China came to the end of 
 the century. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 South Africa and the Boer War 
 
 N the last chapter we made a long jump, all 
 together, hand in hand, from the United States 
 across the great Pacific Ocean to far-off China 
 and Japan. Now we have as long a jump to 
 make, from those countries to the lower end of 
 Africa, where that continent gets narrow and pushes itself far 
 down into the southern ocean. 
 
 The story of Africa is a very interesting one. In 1800 
 we knew hardly anything about it. Men called it the *' Dark 
 Continent." It was in a double way the land of midnight. In 
 the first place most of its people had faces as 
 
 111 • 1 • 1 ^ 1-^1 J 1 -i. What We Know 
 
 black as midnight, and m the second place it ^bout Africa 
 seemed as dark inside as a house is when we 
 go into it at twelve o'clock at night. There may be people 
 in the house, as there were in Africa, but if there are no lights 
 it might as well be empty for all that we can make out. 
 
 In 1900 we knew a great deal about Africa. Daring 
 travelers had gone into it and through it. They had crossed 
 it from east to west and from north to south, and maps had 
 been made showing its rivers and lakes, its mountains and 
 plains, its countries and towns, and other things we look for 
 in our atlases. In another chapter I shall tell you something 
 about these travelers. Here I am going to speak of something 
 that took place after the country had become well known, and 
 Africa was a dark continent no longer. 
 
 X53 
 
154 SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BOER WAR 
 
 It was first discovered and then it was divided up between 
 various nations. England and France and Germany and 
 Portugal claimed to own orreat districts of it. In the far south 
 was a large English province named Cape Colony. And 
 north of this was a Dutch settlement known as the Transvaal 
 Republic. At the very end of the century a war broke out 
 here between the English and the Dutch, and it is this war 
 that I am now going to tell you about. 
 
 The Dutch went to South Africa almost as long ago as the 
 English went to America. They were there as early as 1650, 
 and in the years that followed they spread far over the coun- 
 try, planting farms and raising cattle, and liv- 
 The Dutch in • ^^^^^^^ ^jj^^ ^^^ patriarchs of Bible times. 
 
 South Africa ^ ^ 
 
 There was one bad thing they did, they made 
 slaves of the people of the country. In those days white men 
 seemed to think that black men had no right to liberty and 
 were born to work for them. 
 
 Now we must 'go forward until after the year 1800, the 
 time of the Napoleonic wars. When Napoleon was overthrown 
 and the nations of Europe began to divide up his great empire 
 among themselves, England took South Africa as part of her 
 share. Ships were sent down there, soldiers were landed, 
 forts were built, and the Dutch settlers were told that they 
 no longer were citizens of Holland, their native land, but that 
 England had become their master. 
 
 In the newspapers nowadays you may see a good deal 
 said about the Boers. This word means peasants ; it was 
 the name given to the settlers in South Africa and which they 
 still bear. So I shall call them Boers instead of Dutch — for 
 they were not all Dutch, many of them being French. 
 
 The Boers did not like the English and their ways. The 
 English said they must give up their slaves, and this they did 
 not want to do. And they had been their own masters so 
 
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BOER WAR i55 
 
 long that they wanted to be so still. Thus it was that, in 
 1840, a large party of them gave up their farms, harnessed 
 their great ox-teams, and setoff to "trek" up country in 
 search of a new home. Africa is a big continent, and they 
 thought they could find some place in it where they could 
 live free from English rule. 
 
 Away up north they went, many long and weary miles, 
 and in time they came to a country with which they were very 
 much pleased. It was a lofty plain, from 4000 to 7000 feet 
 above the sea, and never had they seen a land so full of game. 
 Beautiful, swift antelopes of many kinds were there by the 
 millions. Down in the lower lands there were multitudes of 
 giraffes and zebras and buffaloes and elephants. 
 The Boers were very fond of hunting" and they r^^^ *" , 
 
 -^ . Transvaal 
 
 beheld these swarms of animals with delight. 
 There were lions, too, but the bold hunters were not afraid 
 of them. Besides this, it seemed a splendid country to raise 
 cattle in, so they unharnessed the oxen from their great 
 wagons and let them run loose. Here they would make 
 their new home, far away from those troublesome English, 
 who wanted to be the lords of the earth. 
 
 The Boers soon found that they had other uses for their 
 rifles than to shoot the wild animals. There were men there, 
 fierce tribes of natives, the old owners of the land, who had 
 no notion of being driven away. Soon there was bloody 
 fighting going on. The negroes attacked the whites, and the 
 whites fought the negroes, and many were killed on both 
 sides ; but new Boers kept coming, and in the end the natives 
 were driven out and the new comers took the country for 
 their own. 
 
 After all the fighting was over two Boer republics were 
 formed. One of them lay between the Orange and the Vaal 
 Rivers, and was named the Orange River Free State. The 
 
156 SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BOER WAR 
 
 Other lay north of the Vaal River and was named the Transvaal 
 Republic. The country was not good for farming but it was 
 excellent for grazing, so they built themselves homes and set 
 their cattle free to feed on the rich grasses, and soon they had 
 abundant herds and lived in a simple, quiet, happy way, 
 spending their time in attending to their cattle and hunting 
 wild game. 
 
 The Boers thought they were now free from the English, 
 but in that they made a great mistake. The English were 
 moving after them, step by step. They had built a city in the 
 old Boer country which they called Capetown, and they kept 
 pushing farther north into the district they 
 The Boer named Cape Colony. Others of them sailed 
 
 Republics ^ •' 
 
 up the coast and took possession of part of the 
 country which the Boers had settled, and called it Natal. 
 Every year they were getting nearer, and at length a remark- 
 able thing took place which brought them into that region by 
 thousands. Diamonds were found in the country west of the 
 Boer republics. 
 
 You know how a magnet draws iron. In much the same 
 way diamonds and gold draw white men. Diamond hunters 
 came in multitudes and began digging for the shining stones. 
 The Boers did not like these neighbors and the negroes did 
 not like them any better. A warlike tribe of natives, called 
 the Zulus, began fighting with the whites and got well 
 whipped for their pains. Then, in 1877, the English made an 
 excuse to march into the Transvaal and claim it for their 
 own. So the Boers had not kept very long out of England's 
 hands. 
 
 You may be sure the bold Boers were angry at this. 
 They hated the English and did not like being taxed by them, 
 but they bore it all with stern and sullen faces until the year 
 1880, when they seized their well-tried muskets, gathered into 
 
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BOER WAR 157 
 
 companies, and decided to try and drive the strangers from 
 their land. And they soon did so. Everywhere that they met 
 the EngHsh they whipped them. At a place called Majuba Hill 
 they gave them a terrible defeat. That ended the war. The 
 British were driven out of the country. Mr. Gladstone, who 
 was then prime minister, said that they had no right there and 
 told them to leave. Mr. Gladstone was a just man and did 
 not think that one country had the right to take possession of 
 another, even if one was large and the other small. But the 
 time was soon to come when England would have men at its 
 head with different views. 
 
 You see what came from the diamond mines. Not long 
 afterwards a stronger magnet than the diamond was found. 
 The dangerous metal gold was discovered, not outside, but 
 inside the Transvaal Republic. Mines were 
 opened which in time proved to be the richest q'^^^" ^ ^" 
 in the world, and miners came from all parts of 
 the world, but mostly from England, and settled in the Trans- 
 vaal, where they built a great miners' city, named Johannes- 
 burg. This grew until it had more than 100,000 inhabitants. 
 
 If you have read the history of gold, you know that noth- 
 ing in all the ages has made so much trouble for mankind. 
 The poor Boers soon found that their gold was likely to prove 
 a curse. The strangers in Johannesburg said that, as they lived 
 in the country and paid taxes there, they ought to have some 
 say in its government. This the Boers did not want to give 
 them, for they were so many that they would soon outvote 
 them and get possession of their land by the aid of ballots 
 instead of bullets. So Paul Kruger, the president, and the 
 Transvaal Congress, said that tfiey should not become citizens 
 until they had lived there for many years. 
 
 After that trouble came fast. An ambitious man named 
 Cecil Rhodes had become chief owner of the diamond mines, 
 
158 SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BOER WAR 
 
 and had conquered the country north of the Transvaal, which 
 was now fast filhng up with EngHsh settlers. Then, in 1895, 
 he sent a party down to stir up a rebellion in Johannesburg 
 and help the gold miners to take possession of the country. 
 He made a big blunder in this. The men who fought at 
 Majuba Hill were still alive, and in a little time they took all 
 of Cecil Rhodes' men prisoners and locked them up in jail. 
 So this bad scheme came to a proper end. 
 
 All went well for the owners of the Transvaal until 1899, 
 when new trouble came, all through that pestilent gold. The 
 gold miners in Johannesburg said that they were oppressed by 
 Paul Kruger and his government, and demanded the right to 
 help make the laws under which they lived. The British 
 government took part in this dispute, and told the Boers that 
 they ought to give the miners some rights in the country. 
 That was the political way of putting it. When 
 
 The Transvaal t i ^i u i • ^ r ^u /^ i • 
 
 p J Joseph Chamberlam, secretary lor the Colonies 
 
 said that they ought to, he meant that they 
 must, and that if they did not he would make them. Every 
 day the dispute grew hotter. While the commissioners 
 were trying to decide how many years foreigners should live 
 in the country before they could become members of its Con- 
 gress, both sides were preparing for war, and British soldiers 
 were on shipboard sailing for South Africa. Paul Kruger said 
 this should not go on, and he gave Great Britain just one day 
 to order back its soldiers or fight. As no attention was paid 
 to his words, he declared war on October 11, 1899. 
 
 Likely enough this is what the government of Great 
 Britain wanted. Chamberlain and his fellows thought they 
 would make short work of the Transvaal and sweep it off the 
 map of the world. They did not find this quite so easy. The 
 people of the two Boer republics joined their forces and sent 
 troops into Natal on the east and Cape Colony on the west, 
 
SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BOER WAR 159 
 
 Wherever they met the British they drove them back, and 
 soon had them shut up in the three towns of Ladysmith, 
 Kimberley, and Mafeking. 
 
 The British tried to drive them away from those towns, 
 but they found that far from easy. The sieges went on for 
 months, and whenever the armies met the British were 
 defeated. It was not the trifling little job they had calculated 
 on. Then England woke up and saw that it 
 had a bief war on its hands. Men and horses ^ ®,. t ^ *" 
 
 ^ South Africa 
 
 and cannon and guns were gathered from all 
 sides. Money was spent like water ; Canada and Australia 
 sent troops to Africa ; Lord Roberts, the best general Great 
 Britain had, was put in command. The ocean swarmed with 
 ships carrying men and supplies to the south. 
 
 The poor Boers were overwhelmed. The country seemed 
 alive with British soldiers. The Boers fought bravely still but 
 could not stand against these hosts. Back they went, step by 
 step. They were forced to retreat from the three towns under 
 siege. The Orange River Free State was overrun. Then 
 Johannesburg, the city of gold, and Pretoria, the Boer capital, 
 were occupied. The Boer army broke up and began a guerilla 
 war. The case now was hopeless. The few brave Boers 
 could not stand against this mighty British army. The career 
 of the Boer republics was at an end. They might fight on 
 for a little while, but they were sure soon to be swept into 
 the great net of the British empire, and Cape Colony was 
 destined to spread until it covered all South Africa except the 
 regions held by Germany and Portugal. Great Britain had 
 become the greatest power in Africa. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Livingstone and Stanley, the Great 
 African Travelers 
 
 The British 
 Explorers 
 
 PROMISED at the beginning of the last chapter 
 to tell you about some of the great travelers who 
 made Africa known to us. I think it is every- 
 body's duty to keep their promises, and the best 
 way to keep a promise is to do so as soon as 
 we can, for fear we may forget it. So I shall keep my promise 
 right away, while it is fresh in my memory. 
 
 We owe what we know about the Dark Continent to a 
 great many travelers. Some of these were very bold and 
 daring. They started from the coast and went far inland, 
 among fierce and savage tribes. Many of them 
 suffered from hunger and thirst and were worn 
 out with toil. Some died of the dangerous 
 diseases of the country. Some were killed by the warlike 
 people. But others kept going, like brave soldiers marching 
 into the country of an enemy, and in time Africa was very 
 well known. 
 
 Most of these famous men came from England and 
 Scotland. I have told you already that the British people 
 have been the most enterprising of all the nations. At the 
 very opening of the century a brave British traveler named 
 Mungo Park went far into Africa, along the great Niger River. 
 Poor fellow ! he went too far and dared too much and was 
 killed by some of the fierce natives. Before him was another 
 
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LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY i6i 
 
 famous man named James Bruce, who went deep into 
 Abyssinia, till he came to what he thought were the head- 
 waters of the River Nile. It was what is now called the Blue 
 Nile, not the great Nile. In later years there were many 
 other celebrated and daring travelers, some of them French 
 and German, but most of them British. Among these brave 
 men the most famous were the two named Livingstone and 
 Stanley. 
 
 Let us go on now to the middle of the century, and see 
 what was known of Africa at that time. If you should have 
 the opportunity to look at a map of that continent made in 
 1850, you would perceive a blank space covering the whole 
 broad interior. Park and Bruce, and the others Mungo Park 
 vv'ho followed them, did not go far inland, and and 
 the world knew almost nothing of what lay James Bruce 
 hidden in that vast land until Livingstone and Stanley made 
 their wonderful journeys and told the world the strange story 
 of their travels. 
 
 David Livingstone was born in Scotland, in which country 
 Mungo Park and James Bruce had also been born. The 
 Soctch people ought to be proud that the first three of the great 
 African travelers were sons of their soil. Livingstone went 
 to South Africa in i84d, as a missionary. He had no thought 
 of making discoveries, and only thought of teaching the 
 natives the lofty doctrines of Christianity, and persuading them 
 to give up their idols and forget their superstitions. He was 
 in that part of Africa, of which we hear so much in these days, 
 the land of gold and diamonds, and of the wars of the Zulus, 
 the British and the Boers. For years he kept on teaching, 
 but at length he made up his mind that it was his duty to 
 become a pioneer, to go deeper into the country, open up new 
 fields of labor, and leave the work he had been doing to those 
 who came after him. 
 
1 62 LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY 
 
 It was in the year 1849 th^^^ the daring missionary set 
 out on his first journey of discovery. Far to the north spread 
 an unknown land, in which lay a sparkling body of water, 
 Lake Ngami, of which the natives had told, but which no 
 white man had ever seen. To reach it he would have to 
 cross the broad and bleak Kalahari Desert, where there was 
 danger of dying of thirst. No fear of this stopped the daring 
 traveler. Northward he went, and with him 
 D^scovered^' went two English sportsmen, Mr. Oswell and 
 Mr. Murray. Their purpose was to fight and 
 kill strange animals, his purpose was to discover new lands 
 and strange peoples, and find fresh fields for teaching the 
 Christian faith. The sportsmen were good companions and 
 could supply meat for the party. On the ist of August their 
 glad eyes fell on the broad sheet of gleaming water which they 
 had set out to find, and Livingstone's first discovery was made. 
 
 Twice again, in 1850 and 1851, our traveler set out for 
 the same country, now taking with him his wife and children. 
 In 1 85 1, after reaching the lake, he and Mr. Oswell went 
 several hundred miles into the north country, and at length 
 came to the shores of a bright and broad river, which they 
 found sweeping in a swift and noble current through the 
 centre of the country. It was the Zambesi, the great river of 
 South Africa, which ran into the Indian Ocean far to the east- 
 ward, where its lower waters had long been known. 
 
 Do you not think, if you had been David Livingstone, 
 and had before you that mighty land which no white man had 
 ever gazed upon, and whose wonders the world was eager to 
 know, you would have desired to plunge deeper into it and 
 spend years, as he did, in exploring its mysteries ? He had 
 seen so much now that he wanted to see more, and the next 
 twenty years of his life were passed in the heart of that mys- 
 terious continent. Some day you may read in his own 
 
LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY 163 
 
 books the story of his wonderful adventures and discoveries, 
 but here I can give you only an outline sketch of them. 
 
 In 1852, Livingstone sent his family to England and set 
 out on one of the greatest journeys of his life. He went north 
 from Capetown to the Zambesi River, and from there set out 
 on a long journey through strange lands to the far northwest. 
 A terrible time he had of it among the wild natives who had 
 never seen a white face, and with fever and hunger to rob him 
 of strength, but in the end he reached the At- 
 lantic coast at the Portuo^uese town of St. Paul '^'"^^ ®"® 
 
 '^ Crosses Africa 
 
 de Loanda, having gone through hundreds of 
 miles of unknown land. That journey would have been 
 enough for most men, but it was not half enough for Living- 
 stone, and after a few months' rest he plunged back again, 
 like a man sailing into an unknown ocean. This time he did 
 what no man had ever done before, he crossed the whole con- 
 tinent of Africa, and came out, looking more like a ghost 
 than a man, on the shores of the Indian Ocean. 
 
 He had made one great discovery, the splendid cataract 
 of the Zambesi River, which he named the Victoria Falls, 
 giving it the name of the English Queen. Have you ever read 
 an account of this mighty cataract ? Only the Falls of Niagara 
 surpass it in grandeur. There is a broad crack in the earth, 
 into whose depths the great river plunges with the roar of a 
 mighty storm, while from it rises a cloud of smoke-like mist. 
 
 The bold traveler had been four years on this journey, 
 and was so worn out that he had to go home to England to 
 rest. He had traveled north for 1,700 miles, and then crossed 
 the country from ocean to ocean, a thing which no man had 
 ever done before ; and his discoveries had been so many and 
 so great that the highest people of England went wild over 
 him. I fancy he did not get all the rest he came for. When 
 a man becomes famous the world will not let him rest. 
 
 ms/mmmmami 
 
i64 LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY 
 
 At any rate he was soon off again, for there were other 
 discoveries to be made. In 1858 he went back to Africa, 
 and this time made his way inland to the great lake Nyassa, 
 which was another of his discoveries. Here he stayed for 
 several years, exploring the country around. His wife had 
 come with him, but the hardships of the country proved too 
 much for thc^ poor woman, who died in one of his journeys. 
 He went back to England sad and alone in 1864. 
 
 Livingstone now hoped to spend the remainder of his 
 
 life in quiet and repose ; but the scientists of England were 
 
 not satisfied, they wanted to know more about Africa, and 
 
 they pestered him till he agreed to go back. 
 
 ivingone e- j^_^ 1866 he landed in Africa ae:ain and set out 
 
 turns to Airica o 
 
 inland for Lake Nyassa. From its shores he 
 started north for the great Lake Tanganyika, which had been 
 discovered by two English travelers several years before. 
 
 For five years after that nothing was known of the great 
 traveler. He vanished from sight. No one knew what had 
 become of him. He might be still alive, he might have died 
 of fever or starvation, he might have been killed and eaten by 
 cannibals. What had become of him became one of the great 
 questions of the day. Not until 1871 was the mystery of his 
 fate made clear. 
 
 In that year Henry M. Stanley, a daring newspaper cor- 
 respondent, was sent out by the owner of the " New York 
 Herald," who telegraphed to him across the ocean the two 
 words " Find Livingstone." Stanley was just the man for 
 this work. He was young, strong, bold, fond of adventure, 
 and afraid of nothing. He did not go alone, like Livingstone, 
 but with a strong band, well armed with guns. Livingstone 
 had traveled like a Christian, making friends of the people as 
 he went ; Stanley traveled like a soldier, prepared to fight his 
 way if he must. 
 
LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY 165 
 
 He was not long in finding the lost traveler. He came 
 upon him at Ujiji, a negro town on the northern shore of 
 Lake Tanganyika. Far and wide the aged missionary had 
 gone through Central Africa, finding many lakes and streams 
 and many strange tribes and having many marvelous things 
 to tell. His most important discovery was the great Lualaba 
 River, which he believed to be the headwaters 
 of the miorhty River Nile. His years of travel , .^" ^^^" '" 
 
 ^ / -^ Livingstone 
 
 had worn him away to a shadow, and he was, 
 as Stanley said, "a ruck of bones." But he would not give 
 up his work. Back into the country he went, and kept up 
 his life of travel until the ist of May, 1873. On that day he 
 was found by his men dead in his tent, kneeling by the side 
 of his bed. Thus perished in prayer the greatest traveler of 
 modern times. 
 
 Livingstone was not alone in his work. Other travelers 
 were now pushing into Africa from all directions, and one by 
 one the long hidden secrets of that "Dark Continent" were 
 made known. But the greatest of African travelers after 
 Livingstone was Stanley, and I must tell you of what he did 
 after he found Livingstone. 
 
 In 1874 he began one of the most remarkable explora- 
 tions ever made. Plunging deeply into the country, he trav- 
 eled around the great lakes Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika, 
 and then went westward to the Lualaba, which Livingstone 
 had thought to be the Nile. Stanley was determined to find 
 out for himself whither this river ran. He had with him a 
 large number of armed men and was not afraid of the tribes 
 of man-eaters of whom he was told. Starting in boats down 
 the broad stream, the party of travelers went for hundreds of 
 miles through the heart of Africa, fighting their way through 
 the cannibals and having a thousand difficulties to overcome. 
 It was a terrible journey, but nothing could stop Stanley, and 
 
i66 LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY 
 
 the stream led him at length to the shores of the Atlantic. 
 He found that it was not the Nile, as Livingstone had 
 thought, but the Congo, a great river which had never before 
 been explored. 
 
 The whole world was excited by the story which Stanley 
 had to tell, of the broad, high plain of Central Africa, a 
 thousand miles wide and watered by hundreds of streams, all 
 sending their waters to the mighty Congo. It was soon 
 decided to form a settlement in this wonderful new land, and 
 Stanley was sent back in 1879 to found the Congo Free 
 State, a splendidly watered and fertile country containing 
 nearly one million square miles of territory. 
 
 I have not told you the whole story of Stanley's adven- 
 tures. He had another great journey to make, this time to 
 •' find Emin Pasha," another man lost in Africa. Emin was in 
 the Upper Nile, near the Albert Nyanza Lake. 
 an ey oes o ^^^ j^^^ been Sent by Eo^ypt to o^overn that 
 
 Rescue Emin y t>7 r & 
 
 province, but had been cut off by the great 
 outbreak of the Arabs, under their prophet the Mahdi, and 
 for years nothing had been known of his fate. In 1887 
 Stanley set out to find and rescue him. 
 
 This time our enterprising traveler had a new country to 
 cross. He made his way up the Congo for thirteen hundred 
 miles and then left that stream and plunged into the unknown 
 country to the northeast. Never had there been a more 
 dangerous and toilsome journey. Far and wide spread an 
 immense forest, that seemed almost to have no end. The 
 people who dwelt in it were mostly what are known as Pyg- 
 mies, dwarf-like creatures, who are found in many of the 
 African forests. Great were the difficulties, the hardships, the 
 perils of the way ; but greater was the spirit of the traveler, 
 and he kept on through the dense wood until he met the lost 
 Emin on the shores of Albert Nyassa Lake, as he had for- 
 
LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY 167 
 
 merly met the lost Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tan- 
 ganyika. Three times Stanley crossed that terrible forest, for 
 he had to go back for the men and supplies left behind him, 
 and then go forward to Emin again. Then he kept on across 
 the continent to Zanzibar, bringing Emin back to civilization 
 and safety. In this way he made a second crossing of the 
 continent. 
 
 I can give you the names and might give you the stories 
 of many other African travelers — Cameron, Barth, Grant, Bur- 
 ton, Baker, and a dozen more — but greatest of them all were 
 the two I have named : Livingstone, the missionary explorer, 
 who made his way by the arts of peace and gentleness, and 
 Stanley, the soldierly explorer, who fought his way through 
 
 cannibal hordes by the arts of force and daring. 
 
 T-i J i.1- 1- Ti. i-u u Other African 
 
 They, and those who came after them, nave j^aveiers 
 lifted the cloud that so long lay over Africa, and 
 no one now calls that country the " Dark Continent." After 
 the traveler came the soldier and the settler, and to-day all 
 that is worth owning of the country is claimed by the nations 
 of Europe ; the steamboat is on its central rivers, and the 
 railroad is fast making its way into the far interior. Africa, a 
 deep mystery for thousands of years, became in the nineteenth 
 century the prize of the world. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Discoveries in the Sea of Ice 
 
 F any of my young readers, in the pursuit of 
 knowledge, should enter one of the large public 
 libraries now to be seen in all our great cities, 
 and go to. the shelves devoted to books of travel 
 and discovery, he will find himself at a loss 
 where to choose among the hundreds of bulky volumes, and 
 cannot help wondering at the number of men who have 
 endured toil and hardship in distant lands in search of the 
 new and strange. And he will wonder more when he per- 
 ceives that nearly all these books were wTitten in the nine- 
 teenth century, which has been the great century in travel as 
 in almost everything else. 
 
 There were great discoveries of new lands in former 
 times, such as the discovery of America by Columbus and of 
 the coast of Africa by the Portuguese. But during the nine- 
 teenth century men have gone through and through the new- 
 found continents and islands, seeking their 
 Travekr"^** hidden secrets. Daring travelers have pene- 
 trated to the inmost recesses of distant lands, 
 climbed the highest mountains, ventured among the most 
 savage tribes, studied a thousand regions before unknown, 
 and learned more about the marvels of nature and the secrets 
 of the earth than had been done in two thousand years before. 
 There is no part of the earth where these daring men 
 have not gone. They have explored Africa and America, 
 Asia and Australia ; have gone over the most dismal deserts 
 
 168 
 
PASTEUR IN HIS LABORATORY 
 
 The discovery of the mission of the exceedingly minute organisms known as bacteria in producing disease ranks 
 
 among the greatest and most beneficient of our age. By it the art of the physician was first 
 
 raised to the rank of a science. The honor of this discovery belongs to 
 
 Louis Pasteur, the eminent French chemist and biologist. 
 
DAVID LIVINGSTONE 
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY 
 
 DR. FRITHIOF NANSEN LIEUT. R. E, PEAKY 
 
 GREAT EXPLORERS IN THE TROPICS AND ARCTICS 
 
DISCOVERIES IN THE SEA OF ICE 169 
 
 and through the most distant islands ; now under the scorch- 
 ing sun of the equator and now amid the freezing winds of 
 the sea of ice, and a thousand books cannot begin to tell the 
 story of what they have seen and learned. Of course, I can- 
 not tell you much about this long story, but I trust the 
 time will come when you will read many of these books of 
 travel and adventure for yourselves. I am sure you will find 
 them pleasant and instructive reading. In the last chapter I 
 told you something about the greatest of African travelers ; in 
 this one it may be well to take a rapid glance at what has 
 been done in the frozen seas. 
 
 In the far north, you know, there is ice and snow all the 
 year round, and travelers there have endured severe suffering 
 and gone through great pain. Ship after ship has gone there, 
 some of them trying to find a channel for trading vessels 
 around the tops of the continents, but finding only waters 
 which the bitter cold had changed into ice as 
 hard as a rock. I must give you the names of ^^^^ 
 some of these daring men. When you see the 
 name of the Hudson River in New York State and of Hud- 
 son Bay in Canada, it may remind you of the bold discoverer. 
 Captain Henry Hudson, who, three hundred years ago, sailed 
 up that river and into that bay. He was not trying to find 
 the north pole, but he came within six hundred miles of it as 
 long ago as 1607. 
 
 The first man to surpass Hudson was Captain Parry, who 
 sailed north in 1827 to the latitude of 82 degrees 40 minutes 
 — only a little more than five hundred miles from the north 
 pole. But we cannot go far in this story without meeting 
 tales of suffering and death. In 1845 Sir John Franklin, a 
 bold British sea captain, sailed to the Arctic Ocean to try and 
 discover a northwest passage around America. He never 
 came again from that dread sea of ice. On the 19th of May 
 
lyo DISCOVERIES IN THE SEA OF ICE 
 
 his two ships, the "Erebus" and "Terror," were seen by a 
 whahng vessel in Melville Bay, and that was the last that was 
 ever seen of ships and men. They vanished forever in the 
 frozen wastes. Franklin and his bold followers became vic- 
 tims to the demon of the North. 
 
 Did no one try to find them ? you ask. Yes, indeed ; 
 nobody was ever sought for more diligently. Ship after ship 
 was sent out by Lady Franklin and others, until, during the 
 next ten years, no less than fifteen expeditions left England 
 and America in search of the lost navigator. Some few relics 
 were found and the bones of some of the poor 
 Searching feUows ; that was all, not a living soul of them 
 
 Parties ' , ^ 
 
 was ever seen again. In 1880 an American, 
 Lieutenant Schwatka, found the skeletons of some of these 
 unhappy men. After that nobody wanted anything to do with 
 the northwest passage. A passage blocked up with Arctic ice 
 would have been as hard to traverse as to sail up the Falls 
 of Niagara. 
 
 In 1 88 1 another expedition went north that met with ter- 
 rible disaster. This was commanded by Lieutenant Greely, 
 of the United States army. It was to go as far north as it 
 could and make a study of the weather and other conditions 
 of the northern seas. Poor fellows ! their ships were frozen 
 in, and for three years they were left in a prison of ice. No 
 relief came to them and nearly all their food was eaten. At 
 last they had to leave their ships and make their way south 
 through those terrible seas. They hoped to find food at Cape 
 Sabine in Greenland, but not an ounce had been left for 
 them, and there they had to stay through a dreadful Arctic 
 winter, slowly starving to death. In June, 1884, Commodore 
 Schley came with a vessel to their relief He found only six 
 of them alive. The rest had died for want of food. These 
 six were wasted almost to skeletons. A few days more and 
 
DISCOVERIES IN THE SEA OF ICE 171 
 
 not one of all that gallant crew would have been alive. Lieu- 
 tenant Greely was one of those saved, and he is now at the 
 head of the United States Weather Bureau. 
 
 That was dreadful enough, was it not ? I should be glad 
 if it was all, but there is another dreadful story to tell. In 
 1879 a ship named the "Jeannette," under Commander De 
 Long, went to the seas north of Siberia to try and push north 
 in that frozen region. But the ice caught the strong ship 
 and crushed it as if it had been an eggshell, and the captain 
 and crew had to make their way southward in boats. 
 
 The journey was a terrible one. They suffered dreadfully 
 from cold and hunger. At length they came to the coast of 
 Siberia at the mouth of the great Lena River. Here their food 
 gave out, and they had starvation to fight as 
 well as the bitter cold. Poor De Long: and all .,. ^. 
 
 o Victims 
 
 the men who came with him died in misery and 
 horror. There, on the frozen sands, their bodies were found 
 by Engineer Melville, one of their companions. He had 
 taken another route, and got south to the Siberian settlements. 
 
 You may see from this that the sea of ice guards its 
 secret w^ell ; the demon of the north lies in wait for those 
 who venture within its reach. Many others have felt the pinch 
 of its claws, but none have suffered as severely as those I have 
 named. If I should try to tell the stories of all these bold 
 explorers I could fill a book, so I must confine myself to one 
 or two more. Of the men who set out to reach the pole, one 
 of the most successful was Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, a stalwart and 
 daring son of Norway, who set out in 1893 on one of the 
 most wonderful voyages ever made. 
 
 Nansen built himself a vessel called the " Fram," which 
 was as strong as solid wood and firm iron could make it, and 
 was of such a shape that the pressure of the ice would lift it 
 up out of danger, and carry it in a sort of ice cradle. He was 
 
172 DISCOVERIES IN THE SEA OF ICE 
 
 not afraid of being frozen in. That was just what he wanted. 
 He thought that there was a great current in the Arctic seas, 
 and that if he got the " Fram " in an ice cradle it would be 
 carried past the north pole. 
 
 Away went the bold Nanscn and vanished from sight. 
 For three years he and his men were lost and no one expected 
 ever to see them again. People thought they had met the fate 
 of Sir John Franklin and his crew. Then, in 1896, the news 
 flashed around the world that Nansen was home again, and 
 had been farther north than any man before. 
 
 The story he had to tell was a wonderful one. For 
 nearly two years the "Fram" had drifted slowly to the north. 
 But it went too slow to suit the impatient spirit of the daring 
 Norwegian, and in March, 1895, Nansen left the ship with 
 one companion, and with dogs and sleds tried to make a rapid 
 How the run over the frozen sea. He got to latitude 
 
 "Fram" Went 86 degrees 14 minutes, less than 300 miles from 
 '^^^^^ the pole. But the ice was rough and broken, 
 
 his dogs were dying, and his food was getting low. If he 
 hoped to see Europe again he had to turn back. He would 
 have done as well to stay in the ship, for it drifted on till only 
 about twenty miles south of where he stopped, and then 
 turned and made its way safe back to Europe. 
 
 Nansen and Johansen, his companion, got to the coast of 
 Franz Joseph Land, where they spent a frightfully cold winter. 
 But there were bears and walruses on the ice, and with the 
 aid of their rifles they got food to eat. In the spring they 
 went south and had the good luck to meet Dr. Jackson, an 
 English explorer, who had spent two years on that bleak 
 island. You may be sure that the gallant Nansen was glad 
 enough to meet a man on that ice-bound shore. When he 
 came to Europe he was greeted everywhere as a hero of 
 the seas. 
 
DISCOVERIES IN THE SEA OF ICE 173 
 
 Now I have to tell you the adventures of an American, 
 Lieutenant Robert E. Peary, who set out in 1891 to try and 
 get to the pole. He landed far up on the Greenland coast, 
 and then set out on snow shoes and with dog sleds across the 
 north of that great island. Only one man was with him, and 
 they journeyed 650 miles across a plain of ice and snow to 
 the far northeast coast. Here the ice ended, and there were 
 broken stones over which he could not take his sleds. 
 
 The brave Peary made another trial in 1896, with no 
 better luck, and in 1898 he set out again, bound to reach the 
 pole if it could be done. He was going to stay for years in 
 the far north, planting depots of food far apart, 
 and so Roino^ north step by step until he could ^^^^ . ^^^^^^ 
 
 ^ c> r y r Greenland 
 
 set foot, if possible, on the mysterious pole. 
 So far as we know, he had not done so at the end of the 
 nineteenth century, and we have nothing to do with the cen- 
 tury that came after. 
 
 I shall have to tell you about one more unfortunate 
 explorer, who tried to reach the pole in the way an eagle 
 would go, through the air. Ships had been tried and sleds 
 had been tried, and he thought the best way to get there was 
 by balloon. This adventurous man was of Swedish birth and 
 named S. A. Andree. He knew a great deal about balloons, 
 and he found that he could steer one away from the course of 
 the wind by the use of a rubber sail and a drag-rope. So he 
 had a strong balloon made, and in the summer of 1897 set 
 out with two companions, with warm hopes of being back 
 again within a few months with the true story of the pole. 
 
 Poor fellow ! something went wrong with his plans or 
 with his balloon. The years passed by and no word came 
 from Andree or his comrades. They were looked for far and 
 wide, but no trace of them was found. At the end of the 
 century they had failed to appear, and no one hoped ever to 
 
174 DISCOVERIES IN THE SEA OF ICE 
 
 see them again. They had fallen victims to the demon of the 
 north and their srory passes into history. 
 
 As the century drew near its end explorers began to turn 
 their attention towards the south pole. Nothing was known 
 of the Antarctic zone except that it was a region of vast 
 icebergs and lofty fields of ice. Vessels had gone there, but 
 the frowning ice mountains had warned them 
 u , .. all away. Near the end of the century new 
 
 Explorations J J 
 
 vessels went south, hoping in some way to get 
 through the frightful barrier of ice. But the century ended 
 and nothing new was learned. The mystery of the south 
 pole was left as one of the problems of the twentieth century. 
 
 You may see, from what you have just read, that, though 
 no one had reached either of the poles of the earth, much had 
 been discovered and various new ways of travel tried during 
 the nineteenth century. For a long time men tried to get to 
 the north pole in sailing vessels. Then steam vessels were 
 used. These failed, and near the end of the century a new 
 method was adopted, that of forming depots of provisions 
 where food could be obtained, and going north from these in 
 sledges. 
 
 Food, you know, is now prepared in a condensed form, 
 so that a small weight of it will go a long way. And the 
 explorers have adopted the Eskimo mode of dressing and find 
 it very useful in. keeping out the cold. The daring Peary, 
 when he crossed Greenland, did not trouble himself about hut 
 or tent, but, in his warm Greenland furs, would creep into his 
 sleeping bag, and slumber in comfort on the broad field of 
 ice. So. the terrors of the north have largely fled away from 
 the feet of intrepid travelers, and the terrors of the south may 
 also take to flight* «.* 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 The Treasures of the Hills 
 
 T is a rich old world we live in. Have any of 
 you ever thought how rich it is ? Just think that 
 1,200,000,000 people and many more millions 
 of animals live on the food which the soil pro- 
 duces, and yet we do not raise half the wheat 
 and rice and corn and other food stuffs that we might. Think 
 also of the great forests and the wonderful variety of woods 
 which they contain. And think of the hills and their wealth in 
 gold, silver, coal, iron, and a hundred other valuable minerals. 
 I might write many chapters on these subjects, but here I 
 shall speak only about the treasures of the hills. 
 
 There is nothing new about the art of mining. Gold was 
 dug from the earth in the time of Solomon. Iron was mined 
 and hammered into sword-blades long before. 
 Nearly all the valuable minerals were known ...^. 
 
 ■> Mining 
 
 before the nineteenth century began. But great 
 beds of them have been found during this marvelous century, 
 and the earth has been proved to be ten times as rich as was 
 dreamed of in earlier times. 
 
 Some of the greatest of such discoveries were made in 
 America, so I must tell you about these. As our people went 
 back mile after mile, over hill and plain, cutting down the 
 woods and planting the soil, they began to find other things 
 worth having than wheat, cotton and corn. In a hundred 
 places iron was found in the rocks, and soon mines were 
 opened and furnaces began to blaze and roar. The black 
 
 175 
 
176 THE TREASURES OF THE HILLS 
 
 veins of coal were found in the mountains of Pennsylvania, 
 and here, too, the sturdy miners began digging and blasting 
 away. Since then it has been found that America has more 
 coal and iron than any other country in the world. 
 
 Just think of whole mountains made up of iron ore ! In 
 Missouri you may see two mountains of this kind, one of them 
 over 700 feet high. It is fortunate for mankind that the 
 most useful metal is the most plentiful. Every year about 
 40,000,000 tons of iron are produced in the world and made 
 into an immense variety of goods for man's use. And of this 
 iron the United States yields half as much as 
 
 Iron and Coal 1 1 t 
 
 all the rest of the world. I can say the same 
 thing about coal. The United States and Great Britain pro- 
 duce twice as much iron and coal as all the other countries 
 of the earth. Coal and iron go together, you should know. 
 We must burn coal to get iron, and if the coal should be all 
 used, as it may be some time, the world might find itself out 
 of iron. 
 
 All the vast development in iron and coal mining 
 belongs to the nineteenth century. There has been more iron 
 mined in a hundred years than for 10,000 years before ; and 
 as for coal, its beds were hardly scratched a hundred years 
 ago. Now we dig up and burn every year nearly 500,000,000 
 tons, and it takes as much coal to drive one of our great steam- 
 ships across the ocean as it did to warm some of our cities a 
 century ago. Wood was much used then, but it would not 
 be of much account now. 
 
 The same thing can be said about the precious metals, 
 gold and silver. If you think of the many thousands of years 
 that man has lived upon the earth, and then of the little 
 morsel of time of the last fifty years, it is hard to imagine that 
 more gold has been taken from the sands and the rocks in 
 this handful of years than in all past time. Yet such is the 
 
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 KING CHRlSriAN IX. OF DENMARK 
 
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 RULERS OF SWEDEN AND NORWAY DENMARK AUSTRIA AND ITALY 
 
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 RUSSIA'S CZAR, NICHOU^S 11. AND FAMILY 
 
 
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 THE SULTAN OF TURKEY THE SHAH OF PERSIA 
 
 RULERS OF FRANCE. RUSSI A. TU R K E Y AND PERSIA 
 
THE TREASURES OF THE HHLS 177 
 
 case. Since 1850 man has found far more gold than in all the 
 years before. And he has twice as much silver to-day as he 
 had a hundred years ago. This old world of ours has grown 
 rich very fast during the nineteenth century. 
 
 Here, there, and nearly everywhere gold has been dis- 
 covered. Almost while we are talking men are finding new 
 gold fields in Alaska. There is nothing more interesting than 
 the story of e^old. It has eiven rise to no end 
 
 . . ^ ^ , ,^ . , ^ , Gold and Silver 
 
 of adventures, men have hurried from end to 
 end of the earth to obtain it, even wars have sprung from it. 
 I must certainly tell you of some of the wonderful finds of 
 gold in the nineteenth century. 
 
 In one of our chapters, away back, you read of how the 
 United States went to war with Mexico, and defeated that 
 country. As part of the spoils of war it held on to \he large 
 province of California, which lay along the Pacific Ocean and 
 ran back to the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Mexico had owned 
 that country for several hundred years, but found it of little 
 more use than as a place to feed sheep in. No one dreamed 
 that it was paved with golden sands. It took the Americans 
 to find out that. 
 
 One day in 1848 some workmen were digging a millrace 
 in the Sacramento Valley in California, and one of them saw 
 sparks of shining yellow in the dirt thrown out. He washed 
 some of this out, and to his delight he found it to be gold. 
 There was no more use for mills or millraces after that, as 
 you may well imagine. People thought of nothing but gold. 
 The news spread, as if the birds were carrying it on their 
 wings and scattering it down as they sped onward. The 
 people of San Francisco dropped everything and ran to the 
 hills, hungry for gold. To the right, to the left, they dug and 
 found the shining yellow grains. '* Gold was everywhere — in 
 the soil, in the rivei; sand, in the mountain rock." 
 
178 THE TREASURES OE THE HI ELS 
 
 Soon the people of the eastern United States and Canada 
 heard the news and set out in multitudes for the golden 
 realm. Some of them went by ship, some crossed the great 
 plains in slow teams, fighting with the Indians as they went 
 Then Europe got the news, and the thirst for gold spread there. 
 California filled with people ; its sands were dug and washed, 
 its old river beds excavated, its very rocks torn to pieces. 
 The half-crazy gold hunters seemed as if they 
 ^ f^ i'l*!*""'^ would like to tear out the heart of the earth in 
 
 Gold Fields 
 
 their search for the golden metal. In seven 
 years gold was obtained to the value of nearly ^500,000,000. 
 When the sands were emptied of their gold men turned to 
 the rocks and began to tunnel and mine, and they have been 
 getting gold from them ever since. 
 
 But the United States was not long to have all the 
 treasure of gold. Two years after the yellow metal was 
 found in California it was found in Australia, and a great rush 
 of miners to that far-ofif island began. It was as if two great 
 streams of men were constantly flowing from the settled 
 countries into the wilds of California and Australia, eager for 
 wealth. In seven years gold worth the immense sum of 
 $330,000,000 was found in the Australian fields, and no one 
 knows when it is going to end. 
 
 Does not this seem very wonderful ? For ages these 
 treasures had waited for the coming of man, and now they 
 were being dug up all at once to enrich the world. And the 
 end was not yet. Another great field of gold lay waiting to 
 be discovered. Far away in South Africa, in a country which 
 had long been unknown to Vvdiite men, and over which the 
 Dutch settlers now drove their herds of cattle, there was a 
 ridge of rocks which seemed put there as a nuisance for men 
 to climb over. But one day some curious fellow began to 
 study these rocks and found that they were rich in gold. 
 
THE TREASURES OF THE HHLS 179 
 
 Then the old story came again. Men hurried in droves 
 to the Transvaal hills and began to blast the rocks and smash 
 the stones into dust and wash out the gold. Every year 
 more and more was obtained, and before the century ended 
 these rough rocks were yielding more gold than either the 
 United States or Australia. It was a great thing for the world, 
 for the nations were hungry for money, but it was not a good 
 thing for the quiet Dutch Boers, who did not The Transvaal 
 like to see these strangers crowding into their and Alaska 
 land. If you will turn back to the chapter on ^'"^^ 
 "South Africa and the Boer War," you will learn what came 
 of it all, how a British army was sent there in ships to con- 
 quer the country and take from the people their independence. 
 Gold is good in its way, but, as the Bible says, "the love 
 of money is the root of all evil." 
 
 I have another gold field still to speak of, that of Alaska. 
 Every one of you must have heard of the Klondike diggings, 
 where gold is got out of the frozen soil, and of Cape Nome, 
 where the sands of the seashore are full of gold. No one 
 knows how widely gold is spread through that broad land, or 
 how much will yet be found. The world is growing richer in 
 gold by about $300,000,000 worth every year, and this may 
 increase as the years go on. 
 
 Now shall we speak of silver ? Does some one ask, 
 Where is the white metal found ? Why, like the yellow 
 metal, it may be had almost everywhere; but this I can say, 
 that America is richer in silver than all the rest of the world, 
 and the United States and Mexico yield twice as much of the 
 white metal as all other countries combined. You may have 
 read of the Bonanza mines of Nevada, which were fabulously 
 rich. To-day Colorado is the great silver state, yielding 
 $30,000,000 worth every year. It is the great gold state, too, 
 for in 1900 nearly half the gold of the country came from that 
 
i8o THE TREASURES OF THE HILLS 
 
 state. The United States gives us ^70,000,000 worth of silver 
 every year, and Mexico still more. 
 
 When we think of the vast treasures of gold and silver, 
 iron and coal, that the hills have yielded to mankind during 
 the nineteenth century, it almost makes us stagger. You 
 have often seen the tiny ants carrying grains of sand from 
 underground till they built up quite an ant mountain in a few 
 days, and have wondered at their industry. But we may see 
 men everywhere doing the same thing, digging 
 lamon s an . ^^ earth and the rocks, robbing^ them of 
 
 Rock Oil . . 
 
 their treasures, and leaving mountains of refuse 
 behind. I have not told you of all the treasures of the hills. 
 There are the sparkling diamonds which we all love for their 
 beauty. Until lately these were nearly all found in India 
 and Brazil, but now a wonderful mine of diamonds is worked 
 in South Africa, and thousands of these brilliant stones are 
 dug up every year. 
 
 What else has the nineteenth century done for the world? 
 Why, look at the petroleum or rock oil, which no one dreamed 
 of a hundred years ago, yet which is now found in many parts 
 of the earth. Over 5,000,000,000 gallons of this valuable oil 
 spout up every year from the wells of the world — half of it in 
 the United States, and nearly another half in Russia. And 
 with it comes the natural gas, which yields heat and light to 
 houses and workshops. 
 
 Of the many other rock treasures I shall speak only of 
 copper, zinc and tin, all of which are very useful metals. 
 Copper, you know, is used largely for telephone wires. The 
 United States is the great copper country. It yields every 
 year nearly 250,000 tons, and the rest of the world only 
 200,000. But Europe runs far ahead of it in zinc, and 
 nearly all the tin of the world comes from the Straits Settle- 
 ments, in the southeastern part of Asia. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Ttie Marvels of Machinery and the Great 
 
 Inventors 
 
 N the first part of this book I told you how things 
 were done in the year 1800, how men worked in 
 the fields with old-fashioned hand tools which 
 nobody ever sees any more, except in museums, 
 and how most of the work in the shops was done 
 by hand. I know that none of my readers cares to hear about 
 this again. They all have fresh young memories and do not 
 forget quite so easily as that. And I certainly do not need to 
 tell any of them about how things were done in the year 1900, 
 for they know this quite as well as I do. Many of them have 
 seen horse and steam machines at work in the fields and barns, 
 each of them as good as ten or twenty men. And many 
 others have seen and heard machines rattling and clanking in 
 the city mills and factories, each doing a hundred men's work. 
 But I am afraid none of you quite understand how great 
 the change has been. You would have had to live in 1800 
 and then been born again into 1900 to appreciate the wonder- 
 ful progress the world has made. Why, there 
 are hundreds of little thino^s we possess to- ^. . 
 
 fc" i Things 
 
 day which it seems to us the world must always 
 have had, for we do not see how people could ever have got 
 along without them. Yet our grandfathers and great-grand- 
 fathers had none of these things, and yet they thought they 
 were very well off 
 
 12 181 
 
1 82 THE MARVELS OE MACHINERY 
 
 You see we do not miss much the things we never heard 
 of, though when we get them we may not see how we ever 
 got along in comfort without them. So it is that we, to-day, 
 pity the poor, miserable people who lived in 1800. But 
 likely enough, a hundred years from now, boys and girls and 
 men and women will be pitying the poor, miserable people 
 who lived in 1900. I suppose, some day, the good folks will 
 be wondering how the world ever got along without flying 
 From stages machines. We get along very well without 
 coach to Flying them, but wc wonder how the world ever got 
 Machine along without railroads and locomotives. No 
 
 doubt, in 1800 people wondered how their ancestors got 
 along without stage coaches. 
 
 All this is curious to think about, isn't it? These great 
 changes are due to a class of people we call inventors ; that 
 is, men who study out new ways of doing things which are 
 better and faster and cheaper than the old ways. No doubt 
 there have been inventors ever since man came upon the earth. 
 During the past two or three thousand years there have been 
 many inventors, and they have given the world new ways of 
 doing things that would seem like magic if we were not so 
 used to them. But there were more wonderful inventions 
 in the nineteenth century than in very many centuries before it, 
 and it is these inventions that I am now going to speak about. 
 
 Do you know what lies at the foundation of all the nine- 
 teenth century progress in invention. I can tell those who 
 do not know in three words — The Steam Engine. It is 
 this that turns the wheels of the world, and sets everything 
 whirling, and clanking, and throbbing, until one would think 
 that our machines of wood and iron were alive and were doing 
 things with their fingers of steel as we do them with our fin- 
 gers of flesh. The steam engine was invented in the eigh- 
 teenth century, so we have nothing here to do with it. But 
 
THE MAR VELS OF MA CHINER Y 1 83 
 
 if we choose to look on the work of the nineteenth century 
 as a vast edifice built by man's hands, we can truly say that 
 the steam engine is its corner-stone. 
 
 The earliest great invention of the century came directly 
 from the steam engine. Robert Fulton, a deep-thinking 
 American, put an engine in a boat, hung paddle-wheels at the 
 sides, and made the engine set them whirling in the water, 
 and the steamboat was invented. It was not Robert Fulton 
 the first steamboat. Others had been made in and the 
 Europe and America. But it was the first steamboat 
 good one, and when it went gliding up the Hudson against 
 wind and tide, flinging the spray from its paddles and send- 
 ing great clouds of black smoke from its smokestack, every 
 one saw that a wonderful new thing had come. 
 
 The people along the river were sadly frightened when 
 they saw this strange thing crawling along up stream. It 
 looked to them like a huge monster, spouting fire and smoke 
 from its black throat, lashing the water with its great fins, and 
 shaking the very trees with its roar. But they soon got used 
 to it, as horses got used to the trolley cars, and it was not 
 long before steamboats were running on a hundred rivers and 
 steamships were battling with the ocean waves. Clumsy, 
 awkward, slow affairs these were, but they were like the seeds 
 from which great trees grow. To-day we have steamships 
 that look like great floating hotels, and that can take you on 
 board at New York to-day and land you in London or Paris 
 in less than a week. 
 
 Soon something else was done with the steam engine. 
 It was put in a sort of iron wagon, with wheels that ran on 
 rails, and was called a locomotive. While some men were 
 working with the steamboat, others were working with the 
 steam-carriage, but it took longer to make a good one. The 
 first man to succeed was George Stephenson, a poor English 
 
1 84 THE MAR VELS OF MA CHINER Y 
 
 workingman. In 1830 people stood looking at Stephenson's 
 little "Rocket" as if they had seen a wonderful comet, when 
 it shot along over the rails at a speed of thirty miles an hour, 
 and drew a train of cars at half that speed. 
 
 I am afraid we would laugh at Stephenson's baby loco- 
 motive to-day, if we saw it beside our great steel giants which 
 thunder over the rails with long trains of cars at more than 
 sixty miles an hour. It is much less than a 
 
 Stephenson and i 11 • ^.Ui.r)i4-" u 
 
 ^, , ^. hundred years smce the " Rocket was born, 
 
 the Locomotive ^ ... 
 
 but to-day there are nearly half a million miles 
 of railway in the world, and I do not like to say how many 
 tons of goods and how many people they carry every year. 
 
 You see what wonderful things have been done by put- 
 ting the steam engine in boats and carriages. That was only 
 the beginning. Thousands and thousands of wonderful 
 machines have been made which would be of no use without 
 the steam engine, and all over the earth are great factories 
 run by steam, and producing such a vast variety and multi- 
 tude of goods that it almost makes our heads ache even to 
 think of it all. The steam engine does not do all this directly. 
 The work is done by machines which it sets in motion, and 
 these machines have been devised by thousands of busy 
 inventors who spent their lives thinking them out and making 
 them work. The engine rattles away underground just as 
 our heart beats away in the middle of our body. As the heart 
 keeps the whole body in life and activity, so the engine keeps 
 the whole factory in a busy whirl, and sets in motion the fin- 
 gers and toes of a thousand machines, big and little. 
 
 Nearly all these marvelous machines were invented in 
 the nineteenth century. Do not ask me to name them all ; 
 it would be like making a dictionary. You have only to go 
 through the factories and workshops in your cities and towns 
 and see them for yourselves. In some of these buildings you 
 
THE MARVELS OF MACHINERY 185 
 
 will see multitudes of looms, weaving cloth and carpets and 
 many kinds of goods. Men and women are looking on, but 
 the machines rattle away as if they do not want to be med- 
 dled with, but know very well what they are about. In other 
 shops you may see huge hammers flattening out solid iron as 
 if it was cheese, though they can be made to strike so softly 
 that they will not break an egg-shell. And there are great 
 lathes that shave away iron and steel almost as easily as a 
 carpenter planes away wood, and huge lifts that will pick up 
 a hundred ton lump of iron as you would pick up a chip. 
 
 Go now into other shops and you will see something 
 very different. Here are curious little machines, as full of 
 tiny wheels and fine steel fingers as our bodies are of nerves 
 and muscles, which make tacks and pins, and the delicate 
 parts of watches, and dozens of other small 
 things, dropping them down faster than you can ^ ^j ^^^^^^^ 
 count. Elsewhere you may see machines print- 
 ing newspapers and books, and setting type, and folding 
 printed sheets, and acting as if they had been told what to 
 do and went ahead and did it. 
 
 This is not the whole story ; it is only the beginning of 
 it. No doubt most of you have seen machines doing many 
 other things, working wood and iron and brass, digging in 
 the earth,, pumping in the rivers, working in the fields and the 
 barns, hammering and twisting, rattling and roaring, some of 
 them as noisy as thunder, some doing their work as silently 
 as ':he falling leaf It is all very marvelous ; much of it seems 
 like magic ; to write of it seems like writing of the doings of 
 magicians and wonder-workers. And we. owe nearly the 
 whole of this wonderful work to the nineteenth century. 
 
 But I would not have you think that all the great inven- 
 tions of the century were the work of the steam engine. No, 
 indeed, you must not imagine that. It is well to call the 
 
1 86 THE MAR VELS OF MA CHINER Y 
 
 steam engine the root of them all, but there were some side 
 branches which did not depend on engine power. One of 
 these was the sewing machine. I need not tell how useful 
 this machine has been. For thousands of years all clothing 
 was made by hand with the needle. Now in multitudes of 
 homes may be seen this swift little machine worked by the 
 foot, and doing ten times what the hand could do. In fac- 
 tories it is worked by steam, but it was made for a foot-power 
 machine. 
 
 Many men tried to make a machine that would sew, but 
 only one succeeded. This was a poor American mechanic 
 named Elias Howe. For years he worked away at it in his 
 humble home, very poor and often out of food and out of 
 heart. But he succeeded at last. He invented the lockstitch 
 Howe Invents ^^^ shuttle, and in that way made a machine 
 the Sewing that would do good work. But when poor 
 
 Machine Howe got his machine made he had to fight 
 
 for it. There are always land pirates looking out for some- 
 thing to steal. Some rich firms stole Howe's invention, and 
 it took him as long to fight for it in the courts as it did to 
 study it out in his home. At length he won his rights and 
 forced these men to pay him, and in time he came to be 
 very rich. 
 
 Charles Goodyear, who invented the vulcanized rubber 
 of which all rubber goods are now made, had as hard a life 
 as Elias Howe. Before his time all rubber got soft in hot 
 weather, and it was of very little use. It took him years to 
 find out that sulphur would make it hard, and he became so 
 poor that he was half starved. And he did not grow rich like 
 Howe. His invention did a great deal of good to the world 
 but very little to him. 
 
 There is one other great discovery of which I shall speak 
 here, the art of photography. I do not call this an invention. 
 
THE MARVELS OF MACHINERY 187 
 
 It was a chemical discovery. And there have been many- 
 later discoveries which have made the photograph the won- 
 derful thing it is to-day. Probably very few of you have seen 
 one of the old-fashioned daguerreotypes, as the sun-pictures 
 were first named. Poor things they were compared with the 
 splendid photographs we now possess. 
 
 After a discovery is made invention steps in. Men have 
 invented methods of printing from photographs, and we can 
 hardly pick up a book to-day without finding in it pictures 
 made in this manner. It used to be very slow 
 
 1,1 1 i. i • i. • c Pictures from 
 
 and costly work to cut a picture on a piece of „. ^ . 
 
 -^ ^ ^ Photographs 
 
 boxwood. Now one can be made very quickly 
 from a photograph. And people seem to like them better, 
 for they are taken directly from nature herself, and show us 
 things as they actually exist. 
 
 Let us consider a few large undertakings. It is hard 
 work for a locomotive and a train of heavy cars to crawl up 
 hill, so in many places men have bored great holes or tunnels 
 through mountains, some of them eight or ten miles long. 
 No one need climb over the Alps to-day ; we can go through 
 the heart of the mountains in swift trains. And in some 
 places we can go under rivers or under cities. 
 
 Rivers had to be crossed, and great iron and steel 
 bridges were built. Some of them hang by strong cables, 
 looking at a distance like spider webs in the air, and others 
 are great networks of steel rods and braces. Then for the use 
 of ships vast canals were built. The Suez Canal from the 
 Mediterranean to the Red Sea saves thousands of miles of 
 distance in going by water from Europe to Asia. There is 
 hardly anything which engineers will not try to do nowadays ; 
 and the works of man's hands are wonderful indeed. So I 
 may say again that in invention the nineteenth century has 
 been the most remarkable era that man has ever known. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 Morse and Edison and the Marvels of 
 
 Electricity 
 
 F we should go back about one hundred and fifty 
 years ago to a certain kitchen fireside in Scot- 
 land, we might see a thoughtful-faced boy 
 watching the lid on his mother's kettle as it was 
 lifted by the steam, and wondering if the power 
 that lifted the lid could not be put to some greater use. That 
 boy was James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine, which, 
 as you read in the last chapter, was the seed from which grew 
 most of the great inventions of the nineteenth century. 
 
 In the same period that Watt was watching the kettle a 
 man in Philadelphia was making another important discovery. 
 He held the string of a kite which floated in the clouds of a 
 thunder storm, and when he put his knuckle to a key fas- 
 tened to the string there came from it a bright electric spark. 
 This spark proved that lightning is the same 
 
 Franklin and ,, . i ^ • -^ -t-i > 
 
 the Kite thmg as electricity. I he man s name was 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, and he too was planting a 
 wonderful seed. The power he was drawing from the clouds 
 would in time lead to inventions even more wonderful than 
 those that grew out of the power of steam. It is this that I 
 wish to tell you about, the marvels of electricity. 
 
 One thing that the kite-string proved was that electricity 
 can travel. It went into the string at the clouds, and came 
 out of it near the ground. As time went on others learned 
 
 188 
 
THE MARVELS OF ELECTRICITY 189 
 
 the same thing, and found that electricity would travel from 
 one end to the other of a long wire. I do not know who was 
 the first man to think that this fact might be put to wonder- 
 ful use, that the traveling electricity might be made to carry 
 news. Very likely that fancy came to more than one man, 
 but the first to make good use of it was an American named 
 Samuel F. B. Morse. 
 
 Morse was an artist. He had been in Europe to study 
 painting, and when he was on his way home he heard one of 
 the passengers on the ship talking about experiments in elec- 
 tricity. Franklin, this man said, had sent the electric current 
 through several miles of wire, and the same thing had lately 
 been done in Paris, where the current had traveled with 
 wonderful speed. 
 
 " If that is the case," said Morse, "and if we can make 
 electricity show itself miles away, why can we not send sig- 
 nals by it, and thus make the lightning talk?" 
 
 " It would be a fine thing if we could send news that 
 way," said one of the passengers. 
 
 "Why can't we?" asked Morse. 
 
 You may be sure that these words left a man like Morse 
 in deep thought. He did not talk much more during that 
 voyage, and before the ship got to New Yopk 
 he had worked the whole thing out in his busy ^i^habef^*' 
 brain. He had contrived an alphabet of dots 
 and dashes which could be made by the electric current and 
 which stood for letters and words, and to-day nearly all the 
 telegraph operators in the world use that alphabet. 
 
 " If I can make it' go for ten miles I can make it go 
 round the earth," said Morse. 
 
 Now if you know anything about invention you must 
 know that it is easier to get an idea than to put it in practice. 
 Poor Morse found this out. It took him years to get his 
 
igo THE MARVELS OF ELECTRICITY 
 
 ideas to work. He spent all his money and became as poor 
 as a beggar. Once he went a whole day without even a crust 
 of bread to eat. But he did not give up. He kept at it till 
 he was able to send a message through a long wire. Then 
 he tried to get men with money to help him lay a telegraph 
 wire, and that was as hard as the other. They listened to 
 him, but buttoned up their pockets. 
 
 "Your wires work, Mr. Morse," they said, "but just 
 think of the money it would cost to lay miles of wire under- 
 ground ! It would never pay. People are not in such a hurry 
 for news as all that. They would rather wait for them in the 
 good old way." 
 
 He tried to get some money from Congress, but he had 
 
 to wait for five years on the slow law-makers, who never do 
 
 things in a hurry. Time went on until the 3d of March, 1843, 
 
 and Congress would adjourn for another year at twelve 
 
 o'clock that night. Morse waited till past 
 
 ongress an eleven, and then he grew so hopeless that he 
 
 gave it up and went home. He was sure that 
 
 all was at an end. But the next morning, when he came 
 
 down to breakfast, a young lady who lived in the house met 
 
 him with a sweet smile on her face and told him that his bill 
 
 was passed. Congress had voted him thirty thousand dollars 
 
 to lay a telegraph wire. 
 
 Morse did not waste much time now, I can tell you that 
 He went actively at work to lay a wire underground from 
 Baltimore to Washington, but after he had spent a year at it 
 and most of his money was gone he found that his work was 
 of no use. The electricity would not go through. 
 
 Then he carried a wire on poles through the air, and 
 tried that. To his great joy it worked splendidly. He was 
 able to talk over every mile of the wire as it was put in place, 
 and on the 24th of May, 1844, the first telegraph message was 
 
THE MAR VELS OF ELECTRICITY 191 
 
 sent from Baltimore to Washington. It had been chosen by 
 Miss Annie Ellsworth, the young lady who told him that his 
 bill was passed. The message — taken from the Bible — was, 
 "What hath God wrought?" She felt that this wonderful 
 thing was due to God, not to man. 
 
 This is only the beginning of the story of the electric 
 telegraph. It was soon shown that the men of money were 
 mistaken, and that people wanted news as fast as they could 
 get them. The wires kept spreading till in time they ran 
 almost everywhere, and to-day none of us can 
 2:0 far from home without seeing: one or more ^^^', 
 
 ^ *^ Development 
 
 of these news-bearing wires. They show no 
 signs of what they are doing; but silently the current of elec- 
 tricity passes along them and we know how they have been 
 busy when we read in the morning paper of things that took 
 place in a hundred far-off regions the day before. 
 
 It was soon found that short wires would carry the elec- 
 tric current under water, and that gave an idea to another 
 man, as wise in his way as Morse. "If it will go under a 
 river, why will it not go under the ocean?" he asked. "All 
 we want is to keep the electricity from leaking out of the wire 
 into the water, and we can do that by surrounding it with 
 something which the current will not pass through." 
 
 This man, Cyrus W. Field, went to work as actively as 
 Morse had done. It was not so hard now to get men to put 
 money into the telegraph, and he soon had workmen making 
 a cable of twisted wires, covered with rubber, to keep the cur- 
 rent from leaking out. This cable was loaded on two great 
 ships which set out to lay it on the bottom of the ocean. But 
 they had not got far out before the cable broke. They tried 
 again the next year and it broke once more. 
 
 "It is not strong enough to bear its own weight," said 
 Mr. Field. "We must have a new and stronger cable/' 
 
192 THE MARVELS OF ELECTRICITY 
 
 But it took much money to make a cable, and this was 
 now hard to get. People did not care to go on burying their 
 money in the sea. But Cyrus Field kept at them till he got 
 the money, and built the cable, and loaded it on the ships 
 again. This time all went well, and on the 5th of August, 
 1858, the great Atlantic cable was laid. When messages 
 began to come over it beneath three thousand miles of sea all 
 the nations were glad and there were great celebrations. The 
 first message sent was from the Bible : " Glory to God in the 
 highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men ! " 
 
 But the gladness did not last very long, for in less than 
 a month the cable quit working. Not a word or signal could 
 be got through it, and there was dreadful disappointment. 
 It was very hard on those who had spent hundreds of thous- 
 ands of dollars of which they would never see a penny again. 
 A Man Who But Field did not stop. The cable had worked 
 Would not be and he would make one that would work better. 
 Defeated j^ IqoV him five years now to raise the money, 
 
 and two years more before the cable was laid. Alas ! it 
 broke again, and the hopes of the world sank into the sea. 
 All except those of Cyrus Field ; nothing could make that 
 man give up. He had another cable made in all haste, and 
 this was laid without breaking and was found to work splen- 
 didly. Then the cable which had broken the year before was 
 lifted from the bottom and spliced, and that worked as well. 
 Thus the world had two telegraph lines under the sea be- 
 tween Europe and America, and Cyrus Field was the hero 
 of his time. 
 
 Since then such lines have been laid under all seas, and 
 we receive news every day from the most distant lands. You 
 may remember how we read of Dewey's victory at Manila in 
 our papers the very next day after it was won. That is only 
 one case out of tens of thousands. 
 
THE MAR VELS OF ELECTRICITY 193 
 
 Ten years after the ocean cable was laid a most wonder- 
 ful electrical discovery was made. In 1876, as no doubt you 
 have all read, there was a great World's Fair at Philadelphia, 
 in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of 
 Independence. And in one corner of this mighty show was a 
 wire along which people could talk. I do not mean that they 
 could talk by dots and dashes, but they could actually speak 
 into the wire and their voices would be heard at the other end. 
 Am I not right in calling this wonderful ? 
 
 This was the telephone, invented by Andrew Graham 
 Bell. Not many saw it in the Centennial, for it was modestly 
 hidden away ; but now it can be seen almost everywhere, and 
 not a day passes but thousands of people talk over the wires 
 to others miles away. They can make their 
 voices heard a thousand miles off, and in time ^ . ' 
 
 ' Telephone 
 
 to come men in New York may be talking to 
 men in London. Why, even pictures can be sent by tele- 
 graph, and a message can be sent in your own handwriting. 
 No one can tell what marvels the future may bring forth. 
 
 I cannot tell you all that has been done with electricity, so 
 I shall speak only of the great things, and let you find out the 
 small things for yourselves. One of these great things is the 
 electric light. The electric spark had been known for several 
 hundred years, but it was not till near the end of the nine- 
 teenth century that the electric light came, a bright, steady 
 glow that lit up out-doors and in-doors alike, aild made mid- 
 night seem almost like midday. 
 
 Have you ever seen a dynamo ? This is a whirling 
 wheel of magnets which is turned at great speed by a steam 
 engine, and gives off such a stream of electricity as had never 
 been dreamed of before. It is this mighty current that yields 
 the electric light, which is like a million electric sparks all 
 welded into one and kept going hour after hour. 
 
194 THE MAR VELS OF ELECTRICITY 
 
 It takes much power to make the brilliant arc light, shin- 
 ing all night long as brightly as the full moon. It is the 
 power of the steam engine transformed into electricity. It can 
 be made to do more than give us light. It can set another 
 engine working and give us power again. And through this 
 power we get the electric trolley-car, one of the most remark- 
 able developments of the century. 
 
 The long, silent wire, over head or under ground, is brim- 
 ful of electric power, which flows along the trolley-pole into 
 the car, sets its engine whirling, and drives the car swiftly 
 over the rails. This power can do greater work 
 
 Electricity as a ,,1 -, i, i !_• j • 
 
 ^ still ; it can move huge locomotives, dragging 
 
 trains of loaded cars ; it can set the wheels of 
 a factory whirling ; it can move the little sewing-machine, the 
 bicycle, the automobile, the electric launch, and do a- hundred 
 other things. What it may come to do in the future no man 
 can say. 
 
 I have no doubt that many of my young readers have 
 been looking for the name of another great inventor, the 
 magic-working Edison. I have not mentioned him, because 
 he did not invent any of the marvels I have named, though 
 he did much to bring them to perfection. For years Edison 
 worked on the electric light, the telephone, and the electric 
 motor, making hundreds of useful improvements and inven- 
 tions. He showed the world how sixteen messages could be 
 sent at once^ over a single telegraph wire, and how words 
 could be telegraphed far faster than ever before. 
 
 But the most remarkable of his inventions was the mar- 
 velous phonograph. This is not an electrical instrument, but it 
 came from his studies in electricity. You may talk, or whis- 
 tle, or sing into this machine, and when you start it moving 
 your voice will come back to you, jus:t as if there was some 
 tiny fairy inside who had caught your words and spoke them 
 
THE MARVELS OF ELECTRICITY 195 
 
 back again. That is not all ; you can hear it as well in a 
 year from now — or in a hundred years, if you live that long. 
 Your words have made little marks upon a roll of gelatine 
 inside, and as long as those marks remain the machine can 
 repeat what you have said to it. When a great speaking 
 trumpet is attached to the phonograph we have 
 the graphophone, which talks loud enough to ph'^^"^^ 
 be heard all over a large room. 
 
 Here I shall have to stop. I have not told you the 
 quarter of Edison's wonderful work, nor the tenth part of 
 what has been done in electricity. Men look on electricity 
 as the great power-giver of the future. No one can guess 
 what may come from it. Its future is hidden in mystery. 
 But when we think of what has been done in a quarter of a 
 century we cannot help feeling that the years ahead of us 
 may yield marvels more striking than any we have seen. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 The Wonders of Science 
 
 |HIS chapter is to be about the wonders of science. 
 Do you all know just what that means ? Science 
 is knowledge ; but it is not the whole of knowl- 
 edge. We can know many things which have 
 nothing to do with science. History and biogra- 
 phy and art are not science. Invention, which I have been 
 telling you about, is not science. Science is discovery, but 
 not the inventive kind of discovery. When we discover any- 
 thing new about the world we live in, anything about its ani- 
 mals, its plants, its minerals, about its air and its water, about 
 our own bodies and minds, about the sun above us and the 
 stars and planets around us, we are dealing with science. 
 When we take any of the things of the earth 
 and make them useful to man in some new way 
 we are dealing with invention. Science, you 
 see, teaches us about things as God made them. Invention 
 gives us things as man makes them. I hope you perceive 
 the difference. 
 
 Does science belong to the nineteenth century ? some 
 one of you asks. Not at all. Men have been learning new 
 things about nature for thousands of years. But for all that, 
 the nineteenth century was as far ahead in science as it was in 
 invention, and I shall have to tell you about some of its won- 
 derful discoveries. I have already spoken about the discov- 
 eries in electricity, which are both science and invention, so 
 here I must talk about some other fields of discovery. 
 
 196 ' 
 
 Science and 
 Invention 
 
THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE 197 
 
 Let US take heat. You think you know what that is. 
 When you touch a hot stove, and your finger feeks as if it had 
 the toothache, you are apt to fancy that something has gone 
 from the stove into your hand. But it is not a thing, it is 
 only a motion. The particles of your hand are set darting back 
 and forward so rapidly that it hurts ; that is all. You cannot 
 see them, but they are always vibrating with great speed, and 
 heat makes them move faster still. This is one of the dis- 
 coveries of the nineteenth century. Heat is not a thing; it 
 is only a motion. And it has been found that light and elec- 
 tricity also are not things, but only motions. This may not 
 seem much to you, but it is a great discovery. 
 
 Let us take light, that wonder of nature by which we dis- 
 cover everything else. At one time it was thought that all 
 bright objects sent out showers of very fine particles of matter, 
 and that when these touched the eye they gave us the sensa- 
 tion of sight, and when they touched the skin they gave the 
 sensation of feeling. Now we know that it is not 
 matter, but motion, that is given off If you ^^^y^^^ *^ 
 fling a stone into the water you see waves of 
 motion passing out in all directions from where the stone 
 hits the surface. If you clap your hands together you make 
 waves of the same kind in the air, and the sensation we get 
 from them is called sound. Hot substances give off waves 
 of a far finer kind, and when they touch us we get the sensa- 
 tions of light and heat. 
 
 Just here I must speak of one of the most wonderful dis- 
 coveries of the nineteenth century. You know that light will 
 pass through glass and water and air, but that it is stopped 
 by stone and iron and by nearly all solid substances. But 
 not many years ago a new kind of light wave was found that 
 would not go through glass, but would go through wood, and 
 cloth, and flesh, and many such things. 
 
 13 
 
198 THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE 
 
 We call this light the "X-ray." The strange part about 
 it is that by its help we can look right through a man. We 
 can see his bones and other organs of his body. If a bone is 
 broken we can see the spot and the kind of break ; and if 
 there is something in his flesh that has no business there, such 
 as a piece of broken needle, the surgeon knows just where to 
 cut so as to take it out. You may see that the X-ray is of 
 great use in case of accident. 
 
 When we talk of light it sets us thinking of the far-off 
 
 light-givers of the sky, the sun and the stars, without which 
 
 our world would be in total darkness. Scientific men for ages 
 
 have been studying these shining bodies. Thousands of 
 
 years ago the people of Babylonia and Egypt 
 
 " ^ *^ ^ watched the movements of the stars, p^ave 
 
 Heavens ' ^ 
 
 them names, and learned some important things 
 about them. As time went on many other things were 
 learned. But I may safely say that in the nineteenth century 
 as much has been found out about the sun and the stars as 
 was ever known before. 
 
 The sun has been watched in times of eclipse through 
 large telescopes and a great deal learned about it. The 
 planets, which circle round the sun as the earth does, have 
 taught us many things. The moon has been brought so close 
 that we can see all its mountains and valleys. And photo- 
 graphs of the planets and stars have been made from which 
 many new facts have been learned. 
 
 But the most wonderful discovery of all comes from what 
 is known as spectrum analysis. You should try and remem- 
 ber these two words, for you will often come across them in 
 your later reading. They mean the analysis or study of the 
 ray of light. There are ways, which I fear I cannot make you 
 understand, to tell what kind of substance a light comes from; 
 whether from iron or sodium or hydrogen or some other 
 
THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE 199 
 
 element of nature. By studying the light of the stars we can 
 tell something about the substances these are made of We 
 know, for instance, that the sun contains iron and hydrogen 
 and a dozen or more other elements. And we know some 
 of the substances in stars which are many millions of millions 
 of miles away. * 
 
 Now let us leave those far-away objects and come down 
 to the earth, the solid ground which we tread under our feet. 
 What has science to tell us about that ? Well, one thing we 
 learn from it is that the earth is immensely old. Men have 
 been on its surface a long time ; but ages be- 
 
 fo, 1 r, i_ r i. Fossil Animals 
 
 re men came there were hosts 01 strangre . ^. r. . 
 
 o in the Rocks 
 
 animals which died and left their bones in the 
 rocks. These bones were turned into stone and neatly packed 
 away for millions of years, waiting for some nineteenth cen- 
 tury geologist to come along and dig them up and tell the 
 world what they meant. 
 
 You may see these fossils, as we call them, in museums 
 of natural history, some of them very odd-looking. We learn 
 that in those ancient times animals much larger than the ele- 
 phant stalked about, and that most of these creatures were 
 very different from the animals we see to-day. If we go very 
 far back the animals grow smaller and simpler, and at length 
 we come to a time when there was no life, and beyond that to 
 a time when the earth was a ball of fire. It took very many 
 millions of years for it to cool off and for life to begin. These 
 are some of the things we learn from geology. 
 
 Science has not given all its time to the study of the 
 ancient life of the earth. There is life all around us to-day 
 — animals tiny and large, plants of all sorts and kinds ; and 
 during the past century many hundreds of busy scholars have 
 been studying these and have told the world a great deal 
 about them. 
 
200 THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE 
 
 One of the first things they learned was that there are 
 two kinds of animals, one with a backbone and one without. 
 We belong to the backboned kind, and so do all the four- 
 legged creatures around us. And not only these, but the 
 crawling snakes and swimming crocodiles and turtles, the 
 flying birds, and all the fishes of the sea, belong to this 
 great class. 
 
 But there are myriads of living things about us which 
 have no bones at all. These are the insects — the flying bees 
 and butterflies, the leaping crickets, the digging ants, the 
 buzzing flies, the stinging mosquitoes, and thousands of other 
 forms which fly or crawl or burrow, and of 
 ^ A • 1 which there are probably a million difl'eient 
 
 Ocean Animals r y 
 
 kinds. Then there are the creeping snails, 
 which carry their houses about on their backs, and are made 
 on a plan very different from the insects. 
 
 Such is the life on the land. You might think there was 
 not much life in the sea, with its heaving waves and frightful 
 storms. But science tells us that the ocean waters are full of 
 life, from the top to the bottom of the seas, and of a wonder- 
 ful variety. The fishes, of course, you know of But there 
 are vast multitudes of creatures of the crab and lobster kind, 
 and innumerable hosts of sea shells, many of them very odd 
 and beautiful. 
 
 The coral rock, which many of you must have seen, was 
 once the dwelling place of a great many small creatures, who 
 built this substance to live in. And the sponge, which you 
 use in the bath, comes from an animal of a different kind, 
 which extracts this spongy substance from the water. Then 
 there are the spiny starfish and sea-urchins, and the strange 
 creatures which glitter like fire-flies and which sometimes 
 make the water look as if it was all in flames. Away down 
 below the surface, where it is always dark, there are fishes 
 
THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE 201 
 
 which look like living lanterns and light up all around them 
 as they swim. 
 
 There is not so much to say about plants. These, you 
 know, do not usually move about, but are fast in the ground, 
 so that when you see a plant you are apt to look for a root 
 and a stem and some sort of leaves. But there is a great 
 number of different plants, and during the nineteenth century 
 hundreds of new kinds have been found in countries that 
 were not known before. But all plants are not 
 rooted in the OTound. There are some which J^^ 
 
 ^ Qrovv 
 
 float in the water, and there is one very small 
 kind which can be seen only with the microscope, and which 
 is found almost everywhere. We call these tiny things 
 bacteria. They are very dangerous to man, for they get into 
 his body and increase there rapidly, and some of them give 
 rise to terrible diseases, such as yellow fever and consump- 
 tion and cholera and many others. 
 
 This is one of the greatest discoveries of the nineteenth 
 century. In old times doctors did not know the cause of 
 these dreadful diseases, which would sometimes carry off 
 millions of people in a few months. Now they know what 
 they come from and are learning how to cure them, so that 
 many who would have had to die in the past may be kept 
 alive now. 
 
 There is another living being whom we have learned a 
 great deal about in the nineteenth century, much more than 
 was ever known before. His name is man. An old Greek 
 writer said, as a maxim of wisdom, " Know thyself," and 
 man is now trying to know himself All parts of the earth 
 have been searched and the races of men looked for, their 
 languages studied, their modes of life observed, their tools 
 and weapons collected, till now we know ever so much about 
 them. 
 
202 THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE 
 
 This is far from all. Man's own body has been studied 
 as carefully as geologists study the rocks of the earth's crust. 
 Science has dug down into us and traced our nerves and 
 muscles, our blood vessels and bones, our heart and brain, 
 until they have learned thousands of things about the inside 
 make-up of a man. And they have learned much of what is 
 going on within him — how the blood moves, how the mus- 
 cles act, how the nerves carry news to the brain, and how 
 many other things go on. 
 
 You may see from all this that science has been very ac- 
 tive during the past century. It has learned a vast number of 
 things about the subjects I have named and about other sub- 
 What Man jccts I have not named. And now it is begin- 
 
 Knows About ning to study something of which it knows very 
 Himself Y\\S\^ as yet, and that is the mind of man. After 
 
 matter comes mind. Science has for centuries been studying 
 matter, and only lately it has fairly begun to study mind. 
 
 We know a great deal about the mind now, about how 
 we think and feel, and how we gain knowledge, and about 
 love and anger and fear and all the other passions, and about 
 reason and judgment and imagination. But we know very 
 little about what the mind is and how it works, and how it is 
 related to the body. Men are beginning to study these 
 things, but it will take a long time to find them out, and when 
 they are discovered the nineteenth century may be so far away 
 as to be half forgotten. But I think men can never forget 
 what a remarkable century it was and how much it added to 
 the great sum of human knowledge. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 The Man Behind the Machine 
 
 F any of my youthful readers had Hved several 
 
 hundred years ago — which, of course, is quite 
 
 out of the question for such young folks as you 
 
 — they might have seen men busily at work, 
 
 using hand tools to bring into shape this, that, 
 
 and the other thing for use in house or street. They 
 
 swarmed like ants in their little workshops, and many things 
 
 of use or beauty came from their skillful hands. 
 
 If you should go into one of the workshops of the nine- 
 teenth century you would find quite a different state of affairs. 
 In old time men often worked in a room of their own or their 
 master's house. Now you see them gathered in great facto- 
 ries, some of which will hold several thousand Ancient and 
 work-people. And instead of hammering and Modern Work= 
 gauging and twisting away with little hand ^^'"p^ 
 tools, they stand before whirling machines, pushing in raw 
 stuff at one end and taking out finished goods at the other. 
 We cannot speak of man the worker in the old sense. The 
 machine is now the worker and man is the overseer. 
 
 The nineteenth century has been the century of the 
 machine. The old system of industry is at an end, and a 
 new system has taken its place. And glad enough we may be 
 to have this new system ; for it has made goods of every kind 
 so cheap and plentiful, and brought so many new things into 
 use, that in the houses of the poor to-day there is often more 
 comfort than there was in the houses of the rich in past times. 
 
 203 
 
204 THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE 
 
 Who would be willing now to live with bare wooden 
 floors, and whitewashed walls, and rough benches and tables, 
 and in houses without baths or drainage or coal fires or a dozen 
 things which no one in these days likes to be without? Who 
 would wish to do without matches, or gas and electric lights, 
 or trolley cars, or daily newspapers, or telegraphs and tele- 
 phones, or public libraries and parks, or — but I shall have to 
 stop, for I might go on hour after hour telling what we have 
 and our ancestors had not. 
 
 All this is the work of the steam engine and the labor- 
 saving machine, and of the man behind the machine, the big- 
 brained man who invented these useful appliances. We 
 The Inventors hardly know all we owe to Fulton and Morse 
 and the and Howc and Edison and a hundred others. 
 
 Conquerors ^.j^^ havc douc far morc for mankind and have 
 
 a better right to be called great than all the Alexanders and 
 Caesars and Napoleons and the whole brood of killers and 
 conquerors. 
 
 But that is not what I wish to talk about. This is not 
 the chapter of the machine — which I have told you about 
 already — but of the man behind the machine. You must 
 understand that when I say man here, I mean man and 
 woman, for every day more women are coming to stand with 
 men behind the machine. We see them in the factory, in the 
 office, at the sewing machine, doing a thousand things they 
 never thought of doing in old times. No one says now that 
 woman's work is at the stove, and with the scrubbing-brush, 
 and before the wash-tub, for we see her at the loom and the 
 typewriter, and working busily away in a hundred other places. 
 
 I think you must know all this well enough, but there is 
 no harm in having it brought to your minds. There is more 
 to be said, however ; the story of labor in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is much longer than this, and there is much to be said 
 
THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE 205 
 
 about it which you do not know or have not thought of. You 
 are young now, playing and studying ; but before many years 
 you will be in the great army of the workers, and it is well 
 you should know something of the history of that mighty 
 army. 
 
 Let us glance again at the workmen of the last two cen- 
 turies. In the eighteenth century they were divided up into 
 thousands of little groups, many of them working alone at 
 home, others in a little workshop, with one master to a dozen 
 or two of men. In the nineteenth century they became gath- 
 ered into great groups, of a hundred or a thousand, or in 
 some cases five or six thousand busy workers. 
 
 This was a great change, and it made a vast change in 
 the conditions of the working people. They were not as free 
 as they used to be ; they were becoming more like slaves. 
 The masters once worked with the workmen, 
 
 1 1 • • 11 1 1- 1 A 1- From Family 
 
 and took an mterest m all they dia. A shop ^^ Factory 
 was a sort of family. But a man might work 
 for years in these great factories or mills and never see his 
 employer, and the old family feeling has passed away. 
 
 This was not right treatment and it brought much trouble. 
 Many employers were so eager to make money that they hired 
 little children — some of them just old enough to begin their 
 school life — and kept them working in mines and dark rooms 
 in mills for twelve and more hours in a day. And they paid 
 them so little that they grew rich on this child labor. Many 
 of the poor little things took sick and died. That was a kind 
 of murder, but it was not direct murder, so for a long time it 
 was allowed to go on. 
 
 Fortunately, there were tender-hearted people in those 
 days, and many of them began to pity these poor, pale, thin, 
 wretched little ones, some of whom never saw the sun shine 
 or a blade of grass grow, or knew what it was to have enough 
 
2o6 THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE 
 
 to eat. As for learning, all they learned was how to do their 
 work. When these good souls saw this they began to talk 
 about the "slaughter of the innocents." They thought it 
 murder, though they did not call it by that name. 
 
 First, they tried to get the masters to make life easier for 
 the sad little sufferers. But the masters said they could not 
 do anything, for they had to get cheap work done or others 
 in the- same business would take their customers from them. 
 Then they tried to get laws passed to control child labor, and 
 after much trouble they managed to do so. Laws were made 
 which put an end to the long hours of labor. Then other 
 laws fixed the age at which children should be 
 /-u^f . k" set at work, and said that they must have some 
 
 Chiid Labor ' ^ 
 
 schooling. In this way law after law has been 
 passed, making it easier and easier for children, and the old 
 system is at an end. No selfish mill owner or mine owner 
 can grind the lives out of the children of the poor to-day,- 
 to put more money into his fat purse. But these men did as 
 they pleased a century ago, and it was a hard time for the 
 poor little things in those days. 
 
 It was not only the children that suffered. The grown 
 people did not find life very easy. Crowded into the great 
 factories, they also worked long hours for small wages, and 
 they hardly had time enough of their own to eat and sleep in. 
 Every employer was trying to sell his goods at a lower price 
 than others, so that he could gain more customers. And to 
 do this he made his men work for as little wages and as many 
 hours in the day as possible. 
 
 Thus, you see, the grown-up workmen were not much 
 better off than the children. And the tender-hearted people 
 did not look after them. They were old enough to take care 
 of themselves, and only the helpless little ones needed friends. 
 What did the men do ? you ask. Did they look out for their 
 
THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE 207 
 
 own interests ? Well, they tried to ; they did what they could. 
 They began by joining together into societies which were 
 called Trades Unions. Then, when they thought their wages 
 were too low, and their masters refused to pay more, they 
 would stop work and refuse to go back again until their wages 
 were raised. This was called a strike for wages. If the mas- 
 ters tried to get other men to take their places, the workmen 
 would coax them away or drive them away, and often there 
 were fights in which many were hurt and some were killed. 
 
 The nineteenth century has been the century of strikes. 
 You see that it has been the century of a good many new 
 things. There were strikes in earlier times, but they were 
 small affairs. In the nineteenth century the strikes were often 
 very great. The Trades Unions grew in members until they 
 became very powerful, and strikes took place in which ten 
 thousand or a hundred thousand people were 
 en9fap"ed. A strike came to be like a war, for ^ ^. ... 
 
 o G) ' Trades Unions 
 
 there were fights that were like battles, men 
 being killed and property destroyed. In the great railroad 
 strike of 1877 there was fighting in many of the large cities, 
 and at Pittsburgh more than a hundred people were killed. 
 The railroad buildings there were burned down, destroying 
 126 locomotives and 2500 cars full of freight. The money 
 loss was more than ^5,000,000. 
 
 Do you ask. What has been gained by the strikes ? I 
 suppose the workmen have got some good from them, but it- 
 may be that they would have been just as well off without them. 
 There are other ways of gaining good ends without going to 
 war or fighting for your rights. Men do not work as many 
 hours in a day as they did a century ago, and they get more 
 money for a day's work. The strikes have helped to bring 
 this about ; but, as I have said, it might have come about if 
 there had been no strikes. 
 
2o8 THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE 
 
 Many workmen are beginning to see that the violent way 
 is not always the best way. Nowadays we hear a great deal 
 about arbitration. That is, the employers and workmen come 
 together and talk over their rights and wrongs and see if their 
 disputes cannot be settled quietly. Many men think that this 
 would be better for both sides, for a strike costs much money, 
 to men and masters alike. Some day all such disputes may 
 be settled by arbitration ; but there are likely to be many 
 strikes yet, for it is hard to get men to meet each other 
 half way. 
 
 Are there no other ways except the strike and the arbi- 
 tration ? Oh, yes ; several other ways. There is such a thing 
 as joining hands and working together. Many employers 
 give a part of their profits to their workpeople. This is called 
 "profit sharing," and wherever it is tried it seems to give 
 satisfaction. Another way is known as " co- 
 strikes and operation." Workmen join tog^ether and start 
 
 Arbitration ^ ^,. ii--ii r 
 
 a business of their own and divide the pronts 
 among themselves. There can be no dispute about wages, 
 for every man gets his full share of the profits. At one time 
 it was thought that co-operation would put an end to all labor 
 troubles, but it does not seem to have worked very well. 
 There are some co-operative stores in England that have been 
 quite profitable, but there are none like them in the United 
 States and there are hardly any co-operative factories. 
 
 I shall have to speak here of another way in which many 
 think the labor Question can be settled. It is called " Social- 
 ism," and is a sort of co-operation on a large scale. Instead 
 of a few people coming together to start a factory or a store, 
 the Socialists wish the government of a country to take charge 
 of all business and do away with all private employers. If the 
 Socialists could carry out their plans there would be no mas- 
 ters and no very rich men, but everybody would be employed 
 
THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE 209 
 
 by the government and paid what his work was worth — or, as 
 some think, all should be paid the same wages. 
 
 There are a great many Socialists to-day, and the gov- 
 ernment has control of a good many things it formerly had 
 nothing to do with. In Europe the governments own many 
 of the railroads and telegraph lines, and many of the cities 
 own the trolley lines and the gas and water works. This is 
 Socialism so far as it goes ; but it has not gone very far yet, 
 and it will have a long and hard hill to climb before it gets 
 all it asks for. 
 
 Socialism has gone farther in Germany than in any other 
 country. That country has got what is called "old age insur- 
 ance." That is, when workmen have reached a certain age, 
 the government takes charge of them and pays 
 them so that they can rest from work for the , ^^^^ 
 
 / Insurance 
 
 remainder of their lives. They and their em- 
 ployers are taxed for the money to do this ; but the people 
 there think it a very good system, and the old people are 
 very glad of the chance to stop work when their joints are 
 getting stiff 
 
 You may see from what I have said that the nineteenth 
 century has made many changes in the condition of the 
 laborers. They had become much better oiT at the end than 
 they were at the beginning of the century. Child labor had 
 been* brought under wise laws, women had begun to work 
 and make their own living in a hundred new ways, and men 
 had gained shorter hours and higher wages; the strike was fast 
 wearing itself out, like a coat that has been worn too long, and 
 other ways of settling labor troubles were coming into play. 
 
 But there was one thing that seemed likely to make fresh 
 trouble. So many new and fast machines had been set at 
 work that goods were being turned out at a wonderful rate. 
 When all the factories were at work they made things of every 
 
2IO THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE 
 
 kind more rapidly than they could be used. Here was a new 
 trouble ; after business had gone on briskly for a few years the 
 factories and stores were found to be overstocked with goods, 
 and work had to fall off until the extra goods could be used. 
 This is called "over-production." 
 
 This is an evil, is it not ? When men make more things 
 than they can use and have to stop work, then things are used 
 more slowly still, because many of the working class have no 
 wages and cannot buy them. I do not know just what is to 
 be done about it. Nobody seems to know. 
 ^^ Z! Z .. Some say that the way to settle it is for men 
 
 Over=Production J •' 
 
 to work fewer hours still, so that a man can- 
 not make so many goods in a day. But employers say they 
 cannot pay the same wages for less work, so it looks as if it 
 mig^ht be a long; ime before this bad state of affairs is settled. 
 As you may see, the question before us is a very difficult 
 one. Many hard problems have come up during the nine- 
 teenth century, but it seems to me that the labor problem is 
 the hardest of all. Many ways have been tried to solve it, 
 and wise men are at it still, like a school-boy trying to work 
 out a hard problem in arithmetic. How it will come out in 
 the end no man living knows. All we can hope for is that 
 the time will come when there will be work for everybody at 
 living wages. But I fear that will not come to pass in tlie 
 lifetime of the youngest of my readers, and perhaps not in 
 that of their children or their children's children. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 Growth of Commerce and Industry 
 
 HIS is a wonderfully busy world we live in. It 
 is in some ways like a great factory, in which a 
 thousand wheels are revolving, hundreds of 
 machines rattling and clanking, workpeople 
 darting to and fro, bringing in raw material, 
 feeding the machines, and taking away the finished goods ; a 
 place so full of life and bustling with business that we feel 
 as if we were caught in the jaws of some great machine, and 
 being drawn through its restless heart. 
 
 Everywhere around us is just such a bustle and whirl. 
 In the country men are plowing, planting and harvesting, fill- 
 ing their barns, feeding and milking their cows, gathering 
 their fruit. In the city the streets are filled with hurrying 
 people, trotting horses, and gliding cars; new houses are rising 
 on every side and workshops are full of busy 
 
 1 . T- • 1 J r • J Human 
 
 mechanics ; whirl and confusion, noise and ^^^. .. 
 tumult are everywhere, and everything and 
 everybody are in constant motion. On the streams and the 
 seas boats and ships are darting along, on land strong engines 
 are dragging long trains filled with men or goods. Every- 
 where man is alive and active, everywhere except in the air, 
 and he is trying his best to travel in the air as well as on 
 land and water. 
 
 We have had quite a chat together about some of these 
 things. You have read about how men have been fighting 
 and how they have been working ; about the discoveries of 
 
 211 
 
212 GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 
 
 travelers and the inventions of mechanics; about the marvels 
 of science and the troubles of industry, and about various 
 things besides. I wish to talk here about another form of 
 human activity, that known as commerce, the carriage of 
 goods over the earth from the people who make them to the 
 people who use them. 
 
 Of course, you know that when a farmer digs up his 
 potatoes and gathers in his wheat and corn, and when a 
 manufacturer takes the goods from his loom or the iron arti- 
 cles from his forge, and when ten thousand other workers 
 produce ten thousand other things to eat or use, they mus^ 
 have some easy way to get these things to the people who 
 want them and who are willing to pay money for them. This 
 moving of useful goods from place to place we call commerce. 
 Millions of men all over the earth are engaged in it. Some, 
 like the peddlers, are carrying things in packs 
 
 How Goods are .u • i i /^^.u j • i_ 
 
 ~ _, . on their backs. Others are arivmp^ horses or 
 
 Transported o 
 
 mules or camels laden with goods. Thousands 
 
 of carts and wagons, heavily loaded, are rolling along roads 
 or streets ; thousands of laden boats are moving by oar or 
 sail along the streams. Long trains of freight cars are hying 
 over the iron rails ; huge steamships are darting at great speed 
 through the ocean waves. All these are engaged in com- 
 merce, the transportation of goods from field and factory to 
 warehouse and store, where the customers come to buy and 
 take them home. The store, you see, is a useful half-way 
 stopping place in this active industry. 
 
 Why, just think of it, you all take part in commerce 
 yourselves. Whenever you are sent to the market or store 
 to bring home something for use in the house, you are help- 
 ing in the movement of goods from the producer to the con- 
 sumer. Even when you go fishing and bring home a perch 
 or a trout to fry for your supper, you are doing a little in this 
 
HOHBiaHHi 
 
BARON F. H. ALEXANDER von HUMBOLDT 
 
 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 
 
 CHARLES DA RWIN. THONLAS H. HUXLEV. 
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS MEN OF SCIENCE, 19TH CENTURY 
 
GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 213 
 
 line. Commerce, you see, is the transportation of the produce 
 of the earth or the workshop to the places where it is to be 
 used. That will do for a definition, and now we will say 
 something about the commerce of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Commerce had a remarkable' growth during that century 
 — greater, I think, than in all the centuries that went before. 
 If you look back to 1801, the first year of the century, you will 
 see this to be the case. Perhaps some of you may have read 
 of a centre of commerce ; that is, a land where 
 commerce is very active. There have been ^ornmerce 
 many such centres. Several thousand years 
 ago Phoenicia, in Asia, was the busiest centre. Then came 
 Greece, then Venice and Genoa, then Holland, then England. 
 There have been other centres, but in the year 1801 England 
 was the great centre of the world's commerce. 
 
 England is not very large, but it is very active. All over 
 its surface are mines and mills, where goods are produced in 
 great abundance. And its many fine seaports are crowded 
 with vessels, which are constantly coming and going ; many 
 of them setting out with English goods to the most distant 
 parts of the earth ; many of them coming in laden deep with 
 goods brought from lands thousands of miles away — food for 
 English tables, cotton for English looms, and a multitude of 
 other useful things. 
 
 England was busy enough at the beginning of the cen- 
 tury, but it was ten times as busy at its end. I could tell you 
 exactly its exports (what it sent out) in 1800 and its imports 
 (what it brought in), but I will give these only in round num- 
 bers. In 1800 the exports of Great Britain were valued at 
 about ^215,000,000, and its imports at $150,000,000, about 
 $365,000,000 in all. This seems like a large amount, but it is 
 small enough when compared with 1900, when the total of 
 exports and imports was nearly $4,000,000,000, more than 
 
 14 
 
214 G^O WTH OF COMMERCE AND IND USTRY 
 
 ten times as much. This is certainly an enormous growth 
 for a hundred years. 
 
 Though this seems a great deal it is only a part of the 
 growth of the world's commerce, for other countries which 
 were of small account in 1800 had become very active in 
 1900. Holland and Belgium have long been busy and are 
 very busy still, their commerce amounting to 
 ..^^^KT^^f.**^" about $2,c;oo,ooo,ooo in a year. The trade of 
 
 the Nations vf >^ > > j 
 
 France has also grown, and is now about 
 $2,000,000,000. There is another country in Europe which 
 in 1800 had very little ocean trade, but which is now one of 
 the great centres of commerce. This is Germany, whose 
 annual commerce is now valued at $2,200,000,000. 
 
 Now let us take a leap across the ocean to the great 
 United States and see what has been going on in that noble 
 nation of the western world. Wonderful is the only word we 
 can use for the growth that has taken place. In 1800 the 
 great republic was only a beginner. Its commerce resem- 
 bled a young boy carrying home a pound of sugar from the 
 store, while that of England was like a railroad train crammed 
 full of goods. But the United States is loading its cars and 
 is on the track after England. If it keeps on it will catch up 
 to that country before many years. Its commerce at the end 
 of the century was over $2,200,000,000, and it was growing 
 as fast as some boys grow between twelve and sixteen. 
 
 You must not think that this is the whole story. I have 
 been talking only of trade with foreign countries. When we 
 come to talk of home commerce, trade between the different 
 parts of a country, the United States has no equal on the 
 earth. You may see it for yourselves — the miles and leagues 
 of heavily loaded freight trains, carrying vast quantities of 
 goods to be used at home. It takes a great deal to feed and 
 clothe and furnish and supply 75,000,000 people, and this the 
 
GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 215 
 
 United States does in great part for itself. It could get along 
 very well if there was no other nation to draw goods from in 
 the world. When you consider that the railroads of the whole 
 world are about 460,000 miles long, and that about 190,000 
 miles of these are in the United States, you can judge how 
 great its internal commerce must be. Why, it has 20,000 
 miles of railroad more than all Europe, with all its busy 
 nations. 
 
 I might go on talking for hours about the commerce of 
 the nineteenth century, but I do not want to tire you out, so 
 I shall say only a little more about it. 
 
 It is, as you know, very largely carried in ships — foreign 
 commerce, I mean, — and for it there has been built a mighty 
 fleet of steamships. A hundred years ago only sailing vessels 
 were used, and nearly all the commerce was between the 
 nations of Europe ; but during the century it has spread and 
 spread, until now there is hardly a sea-port on 
 the earth to which these e^reat ships are not ^^ ®"''^® 
 
 o r Has Spread 
 
 sent. Through every part of the ocean they 
 rush as fast as steam and whirling screws can drive them, 
 bound for every port of Africa, for all the nations of America, 
 for the great island of Australia, for the peninsula of India 
 with its vast hordes of people, and to lands which a hundred 
 years ago no white man had ever seen. 
 
 Two great countries have been opened during the cen- 
 tury to the commerce of the world. One of these is Japan. 
 In 1800 a few Dutch ships were allowed to come once a year 
 to one of its ports, and foreign goods were like curiosities to 
 the people. Now its foreign trade every year comes to more 
 than $200,000,000, more than half as great as the trade of 
 England in 1800. The other is China, which has opened 
 many of its ports to the ships of the world, and has a foreign 
 trade about equal to that of Japan. 
 
2i6 GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 
 
 Of course, the nations are looking out all the time for 
 new places to send their goods to, and of these the most prom- 
 ising is China. That country, you know, is like an immense 
 ant hill. It is swarming with people, crowded with human 
 beings. Why, it contains more than a fourth part of all the 
 people of the earth. Here is a mighty held for commerce if the 
 Chinese once get a liking for foreign goods. All the trading 
 nations of the earth are sending ships and goods to China, 
 and some of them have taken hold of Chinese sea-ports, and 
 claim them for their own. The United States has not done 
 this. All it asks for is an ** open door" to China. That is, 
 it wants the same rights of trade as other countries have ; but 
 it has no fancy for swallowing up China to get its trade. 
 
 Now let us leave the subject of commerce and take a 
 look at the foundation upon which commerce rests. In build- 
 ing a house we have to consider very carefully 
 , r the foundation, if we do not want the bricks 
 
 of Commerce ' 
 
 and mortar to come tumbling down about our 
 ears. Everything, in fact, has its foundation, and if this is 
 not good and strong the time will come when the edifice, 
 whatever it is, will come creeping or rushing down. 
 
 The foundation of commerce is industry. Men must till 
 the earth, dig in the mines, set the tools of the workshops in 
 motion, before they can have anything to send abroad. That 
 is the way it has long been in England and France and Hol- 
 land and Germany. These have been great manufacturing 
 countries, making goods in vast quantities, and sending them 
 to other countries to get other goods in return, or to obtain 
 money in payment. Much of what they get is food, for they 
 do not raise enough at home to feed their workingmen, and 
 must buy grain and meat and other food in foreign lands. 
 
 Do you think that a country which cannot feed itself is 
 on a safe foundation ? If its trade falls off, so that it cannot 
 
GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 217 
 
 sell enough goods in other lands to pay for its food, many of 
 its people are likely to go hungry. Many writers think that 
 some time this will be the fate of England. The farms of 
 that island do not raise half enough food for its people, and 
 it has to buy the rest. If other countries take away its trade 
 and it cannot pay for its food its people are likely to suffer 
 severely. 
 
 If we come now to the United States, we shall find that 
 its commerce is built on a sounder foundation. It raises not 
 only all the food its people need, but a large part of the food 
 that is eaten in Europe. England would starve if it were not 
 for the wheat and meat of the United States, ^^e Position 
 Its vast corn fields and mighty wheat farms of the 
 and great cattle pastures are some of the ^"'*^®^ states 
 foundation stones that make the United States strong and 
 solid. And another of these huge foundation stones is its 
 cotton fields, which feed the looms of the world. 
 
 You may see from this that the United States could cut 
 loose from Europe and go on very well without it ; but if 
 Europe were to cut loose from the United States many of its 
 tables would be empty of food and its looms would soon be 
 idle for lack of cotton thread. So it looks as if the United 
 States had the soundest foundation of all. 
 
 It is on this solid foundation that its manufactures and 
 its commerce have been built. The mines and the fields of 
 the great republic yield the iron and coal and cotton and 
 other things needed in its workshops and supply in abun- 
 dance food for the tables of its people. So it has become not 
 only a great farming and mining country, but a great manu- 
 facturing country as well. Year after year more mills and 
 factories and workshops have been built and filled with 
 machinery, and now that country is able to supply itself with 
 goods of every kind, and it has a large quantity every year to 
 
2i8 GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 
 
 send abroad. In 1890 the value of the goods made in Ameri- 
 can workshops was over $9,000,000,000. In 1900 it was 
 much more than this. 
 
 I shall have to say something more about what the United 
 States sends abroad. Its mines have long helped to supply 
 the world with gold and silver, and are now beginning to 
 supply it with coal of which it appears to have an abundant 
 supply in its hills. No manufacturing country can go on 
 long without coal. But Europe, at the end of 
 en ing oa ^j^^ nineteenth century, found itself runnino^ 
 
 to Europe -^ ' ^ 
 
 short of this very useful substance, and the 
 United States was called on to send many ship-loads of the 
 "black diamond" abroad. Happily for that country, its mines 
 of coal are deep and broad, and it can warm itself, and Europe 
 as well, for a long time to come. 
 
 Now, if you do not mind, we will go back to figures 
 again. There is nothing like figures to make business mat- 
 ters plain. If we compare the commerce of the nations of 
 Europe with that of the United States it teaches us a very 
 interesting lesson. If we look at the figures for Germany and 
 France and Holland and Belgium, we find no great difference 
 between exports and imports. These countries bring in more 
 than they send out — but not a great deal more, except in the 
 case of Germany, whose imports are about $350,000,000 more 
 than their exports. 
 
 In Great Britain the difTerence is much greater. In 1898 
 that country sent out goods worth $1,400,000,000 and brought 
 in goods worth nearly $2,300,000,000. Here was a difference 
 of $900,000,000. And this difference had to be paid for. No 
 nation gives its goods for nothing. If it cannot get other 
 goods it will demand money. So it looks as if money, or 
 something that stands for money, is going out of England 
 at a fast rate. 
 
GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY 219 
 
 If we go back to the United States we find there a state 
 of affairs different from that of any of the countries named. 
 There, in 1899, the exports came to $1,320,000,000; the 
 imports to $816,000,000. That is to say, the United States 
 sold about $500,000,000 worth of goods more than it bought. 
 These were made up of cotton and wdieat and corn and oil 
 and a great variety of manufactured goods. 
 But what I want you to notice is the larp"e sum , ^^^ / ^" 
 
 •' o Imports 
 
 owing the United States, what is known as the 
 balance of trade. That has to be paid for in some way ; so 
 you may see that the American people are remarkably well 
 off in their commercial relations. 
 
 Not many years ago that country sent out very few 
 manufactured goods. Now it sends out a large quantity; 
 and this is every year growing greater, so that the Americans 
 are looking all the time for new markets. That is why they 
 want an "open door" in China, and want to trade with 
 Japan and the Philippine Islands and every other country that 
 will take their goods. They are in the field for the world's 
 trade along with England and Germany and some other 
 countries, and there is likely to be a pretty hard fight. The 
 country that can give the best goods at the cheapest price is 
 the one that is likely to win. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 The World of Our Own Time 
 
 E have made a long journey together, and I hope 
 every one of us, young and old alike, has seen 
 something new on the road, and that we all end 
 our journey wiser than when we began it. And 
 I hope also that every one has enjoyed the ride, 
 since it is much better to gain knowledge in a pleasant than 
 in a disagreeable way. So I trust that each of my readers 
 has come to this point with a smile instead of a frown. We 
 are near the end of the road, and nothing remains but to take 
 a look back and a look around us. 
 
 I have already pointed out the strong contrast between 
 the years 1800 and 1900. The people who lived in 1800 may 
 have all passed away, but there are many now living who can 
 look back to a part of the century when the means of living 
 What Our were very different from what they are now. 
 
 Grandfathers If you ask your grandfathers, or any of your 
 ^^^ oldest friends, about this, it is likely that some 
 
 of them can tell you how they felt when they saw the first 
 queer little locomotives running on the first rails, and how 
 scared they were when these rattling things went by, spouting 
 out smoke and fire from their iron throats. And others may 
 be able to tell you how their fathers made their wills and 
 bade good bye to all their friends when they were starting on 
 a journey of a few hundred miles. Nowadays all we do is to 
 hurry through our breakfast, run for the train, and shout back 
 that we will be home to-night or to-morrow. 
 220 
 
-VILLI AM McKINLEY PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES 
 
 ALBERT EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES 
 
 -- ~—-l 
 
 U HUNG CHANG, "THE GRAND OLD MAN" OF CHINA WILLIAM 11. PRESENT EMPEROR OF GERMANY 
 
 RULERS AND REPRESENTATIVES OF AM&RiCA, ENGLAND, CHINA AND GERMANY 
 
RT. HON. SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD G C. B 
 Prime Minister of Canada, 1S78-1891 
 
 RT. HON. J. S. P. THOMPSON, K. C. M. G 
 Prime Minister of Canada, i8g2-;894. 
 
 RT. HON. SIR WILFRID LAURIER 
 Prime Minister of Canada, 1896. 
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS SONS OF CANADA 
 
 SIR CHARLES TUPPEK 
 
THE WORLD OF OUR OWN TIME 221 
 
 You can find many who are able to tell you other things 
 than this. They can describe what a trouble it was to make 
 a fire without matches, and with nothing better than flint and 
 steel ; and how dismal it was to go to bed in a freezing room, 
 or to get up and go out in the snow for wood to make a fire 
 with in the morning. They can tell you what magic they 
 thought it when they were told that men were sending news 
 over hundreds of miles of wire or under thousands of miles of 
 the ocean. They can tell you of the first sewing machine, the 
 first plowing and reaping machines, the first of a hundred 
 other machines, and of the building of enormous factories to 
 hold these machines and the people who kept them at work. 
 
 Have you ever read the story of the man with the seven- 
 league boots — that very long-legged old * fellow whose steps 
 were seven leagues long ? All I can say to that is that the 
 world seems to have been traveling in seven-league boots 
 during the nineteenth century, and getting over ground at a 
 rate that would have made the people of the 
 past open their eyes very wide indeed. As for League Boots 
 us, we have got used to it, and nothing seems 
 very wonderful to-day. If I should tell you that boats would 
 soon be going across the ocean under water, or air-ships sail- 
 ing from America to China, I fancy none of you would say, 
 " That is impossible." We have seen so many wonders that 
 we are getting ready to believe that almost everything is 
 possible. 
 
 If one of our forefathers who went to sleep a hundred 
 years ago was to waken up to-day and look around him in 
 this dawn of the twentieth century, I imagine he would not 
 take these changes quite so quietly as we do. Suppose there 
 were some such Rip Van Winkle, who woke up after a hun- 
 dred years' sleep and found himself in the midst of the whirl 
 of this modern world ! Would he not feel much like Aladdin, 
 
222 THE WORLD OF OUR OWN TIME 
 
 when he rubbed his lamp and saw wonderful palaces spring- 
 ing up around him? He would certainly think that the world 
 had gone through a marvelous transformation, and that some 
 great magician had been at work. And what would surprise 
 him most of all m.ight well be to see that nobody else seen:ied 
 surprised, and that people walked among these marvels Avith- 
 out taking the trouble to look at them. 
 
 You have read in this book the story of many of these 
 marvels, how they began and how they have grown. I do 
 not intend to tell the story again ; but I think it will be well 
 to look around us a little and notice some of the new things 
 which our old Rip Van Winkle would gaze at 
 «?^.., J"^.^ in amazement if he should waken from his 
 
 Worth Seeing 
 
 long slumber. 
 
 I shall say nothing more about the railroad and the 
 steamboat, the factory and the foundry, the mine and the 
 tunnel, the telegraph and the telephone, the electric light and 
 the trolley car, or the wonders of science and invention. You 
 have read of all these, so we must look round us for some- 
 thing else of interest. 
 
 There are other things to be seen ; the marvels of science 
 and invention do not complete the story. Let us take the fine 
 arts, for instance. Fine paintings, wonderful statues, splendid 
 buildings, are not new things — they were known several 
 thousand yeiirs ago. But the world was never half so rich in 
 these as it is to-day. Our large cities are now like great 
 art galleries. There are magnificent paintings which every- 
 body can see — miles of them in some cities. There are grand 
 statues, and groups of statues, in marble and bronze, in-doors 
 and out, and the poorest dwelling may now have its humble 
 works of art. As for magnificent buildings, we may see them 
 by the thousands ; a great city to-day is a great World's Fair 
 of architecture. 
 
THE WORLD OF OUR OWN TIME 223 
 
 People have to work almost as hard as they ever did, 
 though not so many hours in the day. But the working 
 classes are paid better and live better ; they have more com- 
 fort in their houses and more freedom out of doors. They 
 are no longer looked down on in disdain, but consider them- 
 selves as good as the best. And they are so combined and 
 organized that they have become one of the great forces of 
 the world. The time has gone by when the 
 working man had little more rights than the ing'^peopie Uve 
 slave. It is not likely ever to come back again. 
 
 What else do we see around us worth looking at ? I can 
 point to one thing which you must all be acquainted with — 
 the school-house. In talking of the wonders of the nine- 
 teenth century it will not do to forget the school, for it is the 
 mould in which the men and women of our time are formed. 
 
 You may not be aware of it, but there has been a grand 
 progress in education during the century. A hundred years 
 ago the great mass of the population could not even read and 
 write, while the higher branches of education were only to be 
 had by the children of the rich. All this has passed away 
 except in half civilized countries. The men and women 
 among us who cannot read and write feel like hiding their 
 heads in shame. And a good education is free to all. The 
 school-house is no longer a hut ; it is more like a palace. 
 And the poor, little school books our fathers studied we would 
 laugh at to-day. A good education once consisted of the 
 ''three Rs " — which stands for " Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rith- 
 metic." I fancy very few of you would be satisfied with the 
 three "Rs" to-day. 
 
 Education is filling the world with readers and thinkers ; 
 and with writers, also. Nowadays nearly everbody likes to 
 read, and more books are written and printed in a year than 
 there were at one time in a century. No one now need go 
 
*262 THE WORLD OF OUR OWN TIME 
 
 hungry for books ; there are enough for all. And libraries 
 are growing up everywhere, well filled with books of all kinds, 
 so that those who cannot afford to buy all the books they 
 want, can get plenty of the best reading for the asking. The 
 free school, the library, and the art gallery are three of the 
 best institutions of our times. 
 
 Other great institutions are the free hospitals, and orphan 
 asylums, and homes for the blind and poor of every kind; for 
 charity and benevolence have grown around us as rapidly as 
 the other things I have named. The world has become very 
 warm-hearted in this late day. People seem 
 other Great ^^ \i2.N^ m'own kinder, and the cruelties and 
 
 Institutions ^ 
 
 sufferings which were common of old would 
 not be permitted to-day. A prison used to be a place of 
 torture and terror, but the kind heart of the world now 
 makes itself felt even within the prison walls. 
 
 It is a rich old world we live in, and it is growing 
 richer with the passing of the years. I think I have said that 
 or something like it before, but it is worth saying again. 
 
 But what is that low, deep sound which falls in music on 
 our ears — that long, strong, ringing stroke ? Is it not some 
 great clock striking the midnight hour? Ah ! I know its mean- 
 ing now ; it is the knell of the century, the stroke of its final 
 hour. The nineteenth century is passing away — a hoary old 
 man, deep-laden with years and honors. The twentieth century 
 is coming in, a fresh young child, rich in the wealth of the past. 
 With that midnight stroke our work closes, for with it the 
 story of the nineteenth century, with which we are here con- 
 cerned, comes to an end, and a new century, bright with the 
 starlight of promise, takes its place. 
 
 * Thirty-eight pages are here added to the lolio of the previous page to include the full page litho- 
 graphs and half-tone illustrations not heretofore numbered. 
 
iiiil3 il 
 
OCT 11 1901 
 
ii^J^M