be complimentary, congratulated the company that so LITTLE 

 great a genius was a citizen of Russia. JOURNEYS 



" Your Majesty, I am not a Russian I am a Pole!" 

 was the proud reply. 



The Czar answered, with a smile, "There is no such 

 country as Poland now there is only Russia!" 

 And Paderewski replied, " Pardon my hasty remark 

 you speak but truth." And then he played Chopin's 

 Funeral March, a dirge not only to the great men of 

 Poland gone, but to Poland herself. 

 Nicholas Copernicus was born of Polish parents in the 

 quaint old town of Thorn, February 19, 1473. The fam- 

 ily name was Koppernig, but Nicholas Latinized it 

 when he became of age, and seemingly separated from 

 his immediate kinsmen forever. 



His father was a merchant, fairly prosperous, and 

 ambitious only in the line of money-making. In the 

 Koppernigs ran a goodly strain of Jewish blood, but a 

 generation before, pressure and expediency seemed to 

 combine, so that the family, as we first find them, 

 were Christians. No soil can grow genius, no seed can 

 produce it it springs into being in spite of all laws 

 and rules and regulations. " No hovel is safe from it," 

 says Whistler. 



The portraits of Copernicus reveal a man of most 

 marked personality proud, handsome, self-contained, 

 intellectual. The head is massive, eyes full, luminous, 

 wide apart, nose large and bold, chin strong, the 

 mouth alone revealing a trace of the feminine as 

 though the man were the child of his mother. This 



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