No one else of the world full of men and wimmen to believe as he did—­no one else to be even willin’ to hear him talk about his dreams, his hopes, and impassioned beliefs.

No; and I don’t know but Columbus would have dropped right down in his tracts, and we wouldn’t have been discovered to this day, if a woman hadn’t stepped in, and gin the seal of her earnest trust to the ideal of the ambitious man.

He a-willin’ to plough the new path into the ontried fields, she a-bein’ willin’ to hold the plough, as you may say, or, at all events, to help him in every way in her power—­with all her womanly faith, and all her ear-rings, and breast-pins, etc., etc.

[Illustration:  With all her womanly faith, and all her ear-rings and breast-pins, etc., etc.]

She, a female woman, out of all that world full of folks, she it wuz alone that stood out boldly the friend of Columbus and Discovery.

“Male and female created He them.”  Another deep instance of that great truth in life and in nature, and in all matters relatin’ to the good of the world.  “Male and female created He them.”

The world will find it out after awhile, and so will Dr. Buckley.

Ferdinand wuz a good creeter—­or that is, middlin’ good; but his eye-sight wuzn’t such as would see down clear through the truth of Columbuses theory.

And if folks set out to blame Ferdinand too much, let ’em pause and think what the World would say and do if a man should appear in our streets to-day, and say that he believed that he had proof that there wuz a vast, beautiful country a-layin’ in the skies to the west of us beyend the clouds of the sunset, and he wanted to git money to build a air-ship to sail out to it.

How much money would he git?  How much stock would he sell in that enterprise?  How many men would he git to sail out with him on that voyage of Discovery?  What would Vanderbilt and Russell Sage say to it?

[Illustration:  What would Russell Sage say?]

Why, they would say that the man wuz a fool, and that the only way to travel wuz on iron rails or steamships.  They would say that there wuzn’t any such land as he depictered.  That it existed only in his crazy brain.

Wall, it wuz jest about as wild a idee that Ferdinand had to listen to; I d’no that he wuz any more to blame than they would be for not hearin’ to it.

But Isabelle, she wuz built different.  There wuz some divine atmosphere of Truth and Reality about this idee that reached her heart and mind.  Her soul and mind bein’ made in jest the right way to be touched by it.

She, too, wuz built on jest the right plan so she could apprehend what she could not yet comprehend.  So she gin him her cordial sympathy, and also, as I said, her ear-rings, etc.

But after the years and years that he toiled and labored for the means to carry out his idees—­after these long years of effort and hardship, and disappointments and delays—­after his first vain efforts—­after he did at last git launched out on the Ocean a-sailin’ out on the broad, empty waste in search of sunthin’ that he see only in his mind’s eye—­