lesson to look, and not to buy. The two girls went out with their little spending-money, and wished to take the first attractive thing they saw. But no; it was better to wait: probably at the window beyond there would be something yet to be preferred; and then, at the next window, something more beautiful still; and, before we reached the end of the street, something far more attractive yet! So we often came home, the same little pocket-money still in their hand, and the delightful anticipation yet of spending it; but they, nevertheless, richer and happier than before in the great enjoyment they had had.

Their little sister Memie, to whom it was all new, could but exclaim at every step, "Oh, buy that for me!" "I want this; will you buy this?" at each pretty thing she saw, until she also learned the lesson always reiterated,-that they must be looked at, and not wished for.

Paris is delightful in many ways: but at that the spring months it was not so warm and sunny as Rome had been when we left; and

season

the dampness, and change of climate, at last made the children ill with influenza. They all got well over it but Gianina, who had almost to be carried on a little bed when we went from there to Havre to take the steamer; but the change, and freshness of the sea-air, soon revived her, and brought again the color and roundness to her cheeks.

CHAPTER XXII.

COLUMBUS AND THE ATLANTIC.

THE broad, blue ocean! It makes one think of Columbus. From the very shores from which we were now setting out, the shores of Europe, — once upon a time he set out, to cross over the same

ocean, then an "unknown one; no vessel or human being, that was known, ever having passed over it before. There it stretched out, deep, flowing, and boundless, farther than the eye could reach. Singular, that people and nations had lived hundreds and thousands of years, and had never yet ventured to stretch out, far away, and see where this boundless water would lead to! The truth is, their vessels were not large and strong enough to encounter the stormy waves that would

sometimes meet them far out at sea, and with no land near under which they could run for shelter. So they had been from the coast of Europe only as far as the Canary and Cape Verd and Azore Islands, but dared not go beyond: all farther than that seemed to them awful and perilous.

Then arose that one,—Columbus. He had lived

a boy- near by the sea (he was born in Genoa, Italy), and, with a love of the sea, had an enthusiastic love of geographical studies. Maps and charts were his delight. The idea began to arise in his mind, that far beyond that western ocean, so unknown, there must be land, land, land, — that old land of the East Indies, he thought, which had long been familiar, but which vessels had to go a round-about way to reach. This, he believed, across the unknown ocean, would be but a shorter way to it. Born and brought up by the sea, Columbus could have said, it is presumed, with the poet,

"I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward. From a boy

I wantoned with thy breakers; they to me
Were a delight: and, if the freshening sea
Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear;
For I was, as it were, a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near;

And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here.”

Therefore he was not afraid to venture thus far out; but others were. His plans and belief were even turned to ridicule; and for eighteen long years was he obliged to labor before he could find any person of influence to agree with and assist him. It was, at length, Queen Isabella of Spain alone who listened to him, and even pledged her jewels to raise money enough to provide him ships for the voyage.

A man crossed the ocean, and found a new continent on the other side; but it was a woman who procured for him the means. Good and honored queen! Her name will go down with that of Columbus to the latest ages, in a wreath of glory, for having done what she could to aid him in his distress, and to assist him in his important designs.