Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/76

72 red Indians, such of them as have been good enough to assist in apotheosis of the man whom their ancestors had the deep misfortune to discover may justly boast themselves the most magnanimous of mammals.

And when all is conceded there remains the affronting falsehood that Columbus discovered America. Surely in all these drunken orgies of beatification — in all this carnival of lies there should be found some small place for Lief Ericsson and his wholesome North- men, who discovered, colonized and abandoned this continent five hundred years be- fore, and of whom we are forbidden to think as corsairs and slave-catchers. The eulogist is always a calumniator. The crown that he sets upon the unworthy head he first tears from the head that is worthy. So the honest fame of Lief Ericsson is cast as rubbish to the void, and the Genoese pirate is pedestaled in his place.

But falsehood and ingratitude are sins against Nature, and Nature is not to be trifled with. Already we feel, or ought to feel, the smart of her lash. Our follies are finding us out. Our Columbian Exhibition has for its chief exhibit our national stupidity, and displays our shame. Our Congress "improves