CHAPTER XIII.

Wall, the next day after our visit to the Manafactures and Liberal Arts Buildin’, I told Josiah to-day I wouldn’t put it off a minute longer, I wuz goin’ to see the Convent of La Rabida; and sez I, “I feel mortified and ashamed to think I hain’t been before.”  Sez I, “What would Christopher Columbus say to think I had slighted him all this time if he knew on’t!”

And Josiah said “he guessed I wouldn’t git into any trouble with Columbus about it, after he’d been dead four hundred years.”

“Wall,” sez I, “I don’t spoze I would, but I d’no but folkses feelin’s can be hurt if their bodies have moved away from earth.  I d’no anything about it, nor you don’t, Josiah Allen.”

“Wall,” he said, “he wouldn’t be afraid to venter it.”

He wanted to go to the Live-Stock Exhibit that day—­wanted to like a dog.

But I persuaded him off the notion, and I don’t know but I jest as soon tell how I done it.

I see Columbus’s feelin’s wouldn’t do, and so forth, nor sentiment, nor spirituality, don’t appeal to Josiah Allen nothin’ as vittles do.

So I told him, what wuz indeed the truth, that a restaurant was nigh there where delicious food could be obtained at very low prices.

He yielded instantly, and sez he, “It hain’t hardly fair, when Christopher is the cause of all these doin’s, that he should be slighted so by us.”

And I sez, “No, indeed!” so we went directly there by the nearest way, which wuz partly by land and partly by water; and as our boat sailed on through the waves under the brilliant sunshine and the grandeur of eighteen ninety-three, did it not make me think of Him, weary, despairin’, misunderstood, with his soul all hemmed in by envious and malicious foes, so that there wuz but one open path for him to soar in, and that wuz upward, as his boat crept and felt its way along through the night, and storm, and oncertainty of 1492.

Wall, anon or about that time, we drew near the place where I wanted to be.

The Convent of La Rabida is a little to the east of Agricultural Hall, a sort of a inlet lake that feeds a long portion of the grand canal.

A promontory is formed by the meetin’ of the two waters, and all round this point of land, risin’ to a height of twenty-two feet, is a rough stun wall.

This wall is a reproduction of the dangerous coast of Spain, and back on this rise of ground can be seen the Convent of La Rabida, a fac-simile, or, as you might say, a similer fact, a exact reproduction of the convent where Columbus planned out his voyage to the new world.

Yes, within these walls wuz born the great and darin’ scheme of Columbus—­a great birth indeed; only next to us in eternal consequences to the birth in the manger.

It stands jest as it ort to, a-facin’ the risin’ sun.

A low, eight-sided cupalo surmounts the choir space inside the chapel, and above the nave rises the balcony.