If you had been a little child a hundred years ago, instead of now, and had wished to travel to the seaside or any other place, do you know how you would have got there? You would have had to travel in a coach, for there were no trains in those days. I am afraid the little children who lived then did not get to the seashore as often as you do, unless they lived near it, for it cost so much money to ride in the coaches. How is it that we have trains now?
There was a man called George Stephenson--a poor man he was; he did not even know how to read until he went to a night school when he was eighteen years old, but he worked and worked at the steam-engine until he had made one that could draw a train along. So you see that because this man and others tried and tried again, all those years ago, we have the nice, quick trains to take us to the seaside cheaply, and to other places as well. Like the sparrow, George Stephenson teaches us to
A long, long time ago the people in this country did not even know there =was= such a place as America; it was another "try, try again" man that found it out. His name was Christopher Columbus, and he thought there must be a country on the other side of that great ocean, if he could only get across. But it would take a good ship, and sailors, and money, and he had none of these. He was in a country called Spain, and he asked the king and queen to help him, but for a great while they did not. However, he waited and never gave it up, and at last the queen said he should go, and off he started with two or three ships and a number of sailors.
It was more than two months before the new land appeared, and sometimes the sailors were afraid when it was very stormy, and wanted to turn back, but Columbus encouraged them to go on, and at last they saw the land. They all went on shore, and the first thing they did was to kneel down and thank God for bringing them safe to land; then they kissed the ground for very gladness, and wept tears of joy.
When Columbus came home again, bringing gold, and cotton, and wonderful birds from the new country, he was received with great rejoicing by the king and queen and all the people. Do not forget this lesson:--