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 ""^'^liHiSffliMin 1?" ii™ .fr-Si, ,.fty... Jacob A. Riis 
 
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 3 1924 029 861 758 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029861758 
 
THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
rhe?)<^^o 
 
Jacob A. Riis. 
 
THE MAKING OF AN 
 AMERICAN 
 
 BY 
 
 I 
 
 JACOB A. RIIS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES," "A TEN 
 years' war," "OUT OF MULBERRY STREET," ETC. 
 
 fVITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
 1902 
 
 .^// rights reserved 
 
 ^ 
 
CT 
 
 ^ Copyright, 1901, 
 By the outlook COMPANY. 
 
 Copyright, 1901, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped November, igoi. Reprinted December, 
 twice, 1901 ; January, igo2. 
 
 jjo^sr r Q Jro^v c.\v c l-i^^-' 
 
 1 
 
 Nor^wood Press 
 
 y. S. Cusbing Sf Co. — Berwick & Smith 
 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
Ea 
 
 LAMMET 
 
TO THE READER 
 
 The papers which form this autobiography were 
 originally published in The Outlook, the chapter 
 telling of my going " home to mother " in The 
 Churchman, and parts of one or two others in The 
 Century Magazine. To those who have been ask- 
 ing if they are made-up stories, let me say here that 
 they are not. And I am mighty glad they are not. 
 I would not have missed being in it all for any- 
 thing. 
 
 J. A. R. 
 
 Richmond Hill, N.Y., 
 October, igoi. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Meeting on the Long Bridge i 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 I LAND IN New York and take a Hand in the Game . 35 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 I go to War at last, and sow the Seed of Future 
 
 Campaigns 58 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Working and Wandering 78 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 I GO INTO Business, headlong _ 101 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 In which I become an Editor and receive my First Love 
 
 Letter 126 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Elizabeth tells her Story 152 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 'Early Married Life; I become an Advertising Bureau; 
 
 on the "Tribune" 175 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Life in Mulberry Street 200 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 My Dog is avenged 234 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Bend is laid by the Heels 263 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 I become an Author and resume my Interrupted Career 
 
 AS a Lecturer 297 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 Roosevelt comes — Mulberry Street's Golden Age . 325 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 I try to go to the War for the Third and Last Time 360 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 When I went Home to Mother 391 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 The American Made 421 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Jacob A. Riis 
 
 facing 
 
 Our Stork . . . . 
 
 The Meeting on the Long Bridge 
 
 Ribe, from the Castle Hill . 
 
 The View the Stork got of the Old Town 
 
 The Domkirke ... 
 
 Within the Domkirke .... 
 
 Mother .... 
 
 The Deserted Quay .... 
 
 Downstream, where Ships sailed once . 
 
 A Cobblestone-paved Alley . 
 
 Father ...... 
 
 My Childhood's Home 
 
 Down by her Garden, on the River Nibs 
 
 The Picture her Mother gave me 
 
 Brady's Bend as I knew it . 
 
 " I found the valley deserted and dead " 
 
 " The dead were much better company " 
 
 Lunching at Delmonico's 
 
 The Fight on the Police Station Steps 
 
 " There I set my traps "... 
 
 Our Old Pastor 
 
 When I worked in the Buffalo Ship-yard 
 " One end of the town was burning while I was canvassing the 
 other " . . . . . . . 
 
 " I went to hear Horace Greeley address an open-air meeting " 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 facing 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 II 
 
 13 
 15 
 17 
 20 
 
 23 
 26 
 
 31 
 33 
 41 
 48 
 
 59 
 67 
 
 73 
 82 
 
 97 
 99 
 
 104 
 109 
 
■xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " The wide world seemed suddenly a cold and far-off place " 
 
 PAGE 
 
 III 
 
 "Hard Times" 121 
 
 'Qxo^hi.x '&\'caY[iO's\% {the Rev. Ichabod Simmons) . . . 134 
 
 The Letter .... 149 
 
 Elizabeth's Mother . -153 
 
 Elizabeth's Home — "The Castle" -155 
 
 Elizabeth as I found her again . 164 
 
 "I was face to face with my father" ...... 170 
 
 Bringing the " Loved-up " Flowers . . . facing 173 
 
 "Out into the open country, into the wide world, — our life's 
 
 journey had begun" -174 
 
 Mulberry Street .... .... 197 
 
 Tribune Police Bureau . 202 
 
 "In which lay dying a French nobleman of proud and ancient 
 
 name " . 20; 
 
 Our Office — my Partner, Mr. Ensign, at the Desk, I in the Corner 213 
 " About that interview, now," he drawled . . . .218 
 
 "■ The carriage went on " .... . . . 220 
 
 " The General said never a word " . . facing 225 
 
 Dr. Roger S. Tracy .... ... 243 
 
 G&vl&x2S.YX-^ VixV^x {Chief of the Six Nations) . . 245 
 
 The Lodging-room at the Leonard Street Police Station . . 254 
 The Church Street Station Lodging-room, in which I was robbed 258 
 The Yellow Newspapers' Contribution . . 261 
 
 The Mulberry Bend as it was ...... 265 
 
 " The tenants bolted through the windows " .... 269 
 
 Lodgers at Five Cents a Spot ....... 273 
 
 Bandits' Roost — a Mulberry Bend Alley 276 
 
 Bottle Alley, Mulberry Bend. Headquarters of the Whyo Gang . 279 
 The Mulberry Bend as it is . . . . . . . 283 
 
 My Little Ones gathering Daisies for "the Poors" . facing 287 
 Mr. Lowell's Letter ......... 308 
 
 The Boys' "Playground" in an Old-time School . . . .313 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Xlll 
 
 Typical East Side Tenement Block (^five hundred babies in it, 
 
 not one bath-tub) ..... . . 320 
 
 President Theodore Roosevelt, of the Police Board . facing 328 
 
 " One was sitting asleep on a butter-tub " . . 331 
 
 Chief of Police Thomas Byrnes . ..... 340 
 
 The Mott Street Barracks 348 
 
 Gotham Court .... . ... 351 
 
 A Tenement House Air-shaft . . • • • • 355 
 
 The School of the New Day 364 
 
 The Way to prevent the Manufacture of " Toughs " . . 369 
 
 Ribe, \r\ my Childhood {seen from Elisabeth's Garden) . 392 
 
 At Home in the Old Town (the last time we were all together) . 398 
 
 " The ' gossip benches ' are filled " . ... 401 
 
 The Extinct Chimney-sweep 405 
 
 The Ancient Bellwoman ........ 407 
 
 The Village Express . ...... 409 
 
 Holy Andrew's Cross ... ... 414 
 
 Sir Asker Ryg's Church at Fjennesloevlille . . . . .417 
 
 " Horse-meat to-day ! " 419 
 
 The Cross of Dannebrog . 421 
 
 After Twenty-five Years . . . • facing 424 
 
 King Christian as I saw him last 428 
 
 The Jacob A. Riis House (ISfo. 50 Henry Street, New York) faci}ig 430 
 
 Christmas Eve with the King's Daughters . . 433 
 
 James Tanner .... 435 
 
 "The little ones from Cherry Street" . ... 437 
 
 My Silver Bride ...... ... 440 
 
 Here comes the Baby ! 44i 
 
 " That minute I knew " facing 443 
 
THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 
 
 On the outskirts of the ancient 
 town of Ribe, on the Danish 
 north seacoast, a wooden 
 bridge spanned the Nibs 
 River when I was a boy — 
 a frail structure, with twin 
 arches like the humps of a 
 dromedary, for boats to go 
 under. Upon it my story 
 begins. The bridge is long 
 since gone. The grass-grown 
 lane that knew our romping feet 
 leads nowhere now. But in my 
 memory it is all as it was that day nearly forty 
 years ago, and it is always summer there. The 
 bees are droning among the forget-me-nots that 
 grow along shore, and the swans arch their necks 
 in the limpid stream. The clatter of the mill-wheel 
 down at the dam comes up with drowsy hum ; the 
 
 Our Stork. 
 
2 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 sweet smells of meadow and field are in the air. 
 On the bridge a boy and a girl have met. 
 
 He whistles a tune, boy-fashion, with worsted 
 jacket slung across his arm, on his way home 
 from the carpenter shop to his midday meal. 
 When she has passed he stands looking after her, 
 all the music gone out of him. At the other end 
 of the bridge she turns with the feeling that he 
 is looking, and, when she sees that he is, goes on 
 with a little toss of her pretty head. As she stands 
 one brief moment there with the roguish look, she 
 is to stand in his heart forever — a sweet girlish 
 figure, in jacket of gray, black-embroidered, with 
 schoolbooks and pretty bronzed boots — 
 
 " With tassels ! " says my wife, maliciously — she 
 has been looking over my shoulder. Well, with 
 tassels ! What then ? Did I not worship a pair 
 of boots with tassels which I passed in a shop 
 window in Copenhagen every day for a whole 
 year, because they were the only other pair I ever 
 saw ? I don't know — there may have been more ; 
 perhaps others wore them. I know she did. Curls 
 she had, too — curls of yellow gold. Why do girls 
 not have curls these days ? It is such a rare thing 
 to see them, that when you do you feel like walking 
 behind them miles and miles just to feast your eyes. 
 Too much bother, says my daughter. Bother ? 
 Why, I have carried one of your mother's, miss ' 
 
The Meeting on the Long Bridge. 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 3 
 
 all these — there, I shall not say how long — and 
 carry it still. Bother ? Great Scott ! 
 
 And is this going to be a love story, then? 
 Well, I have turned it over and over, a;nd looked 
 at it from every angle, but if I am to tell the truth, 
 as I promised, I don't see how it can be helped. 
 If I am to do that, I must begin at the Long Bridge. 
 I stepped on it that day a boy, and came off it with 
 the fixed purpose of a man. How I stuck to it is 
 part of the story — the best part, to my thinking; 
 and I ought to know, seeing that our silver wedding 
 comes this March. Silver wedding, humph ! She 
 isn't a week older than the day I married her — not 
 a week. It was all in the way of her that I came 
 here ; though at the time I am speaking of I rather 
 guessed than knew it was Elizabeth. She lived 
 over there bevond the bridge. We had been chil- 
 dren together. I suppose I had seen her a thou- 
 sand times before without noticing. In school I 
 had heard the boys trading in her for marbles and 
 brass buttons as a partner at dances and games — 
 generally trading off the other girls for her. , She 
 was such a pretty dancer ! I was not. " Soldiers 
 and robbers " was more to my taste. That any 
 girl, with curls or without, should be worth a good 
 marble, or a regimental button with a sound eye, 
 that could be strung, was rank foolishness to me 
 until that day on the bridge. 
 
4 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 And now I shall have to recross it after all, to 
 tell who and what we were, that we may start fair. 
 I shall have to go slow, too, for back of that day 
 everything seems very indistinct and strange. A 
 few things stand out more clearly than the rest. 
 The day, for instance, when I was first dragged off 
 to school by an avenging housemaid and thrust 
 howling into an empty hogshead by the ogre of a 
 schoolmarm, who, when she had put the lid on, 
 gnashed her j^ellow teeth at the bunghole and told 
 me that so bad boys were dealt with in school. At 
 recess she had me up to the pig-pen in the yard as 
 a further warning. The pig had a slit in the ear. 
 It was for being lazy, she explained, and showed me 
 the shears. Boys were no better than pigs. Some 
 were worse; then — a jab at the air with the scis- 
 sors told the rest. Poor father ! He was a school- 
 master, too ; how much sorrow it might have spared 
 him had he known of this ! But we were too scared 
 to tell, I suppose. He had set his heart upon my 
 taking up his calling, and I hated the school from 
 the day I first saw it. Small wonder. The only 
 study he succeeded in interesting me in was Eng- 
 lish, because Charles Dickens's paper, All the Year 
 Round, came to the house with stories ever so 
 much more alluring than the tedious grammar. 
 He was of the old dispensation, wedded to the 
 old ways. But the short cut I took to knowl- 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 5 
 
 edge in that branch I think opened his eyes to 
 some things ahead of his time. Their day had 
 not yet come. He hved to see it dawn and 
 was glad. I know how he felt about it. I my- 
 self have lived down the day of the hogshead 
 in the child-life of New York. Some of the 
 schools our women made an end of a few years 
 ago weren't much better. To help clean them 
 out was like getting square with the ogre that 
 plagued my childhood. 
 
 I mind, too, my first collision with the tenement. 
 There was just one, and it stood over against the 
 castle hill, separated from it only by the dry moat. 
 We called it Rag Hall, and I guess it deserved the 
 name. Ribe was a very old town. Five hundred 
 years ago or so it had been the seat of the fighting 
 kings, when Denmark was a power to be reckoned 
 with. There they were handy when trouble broke 
 out with the German barons to the south. But the 
 times changed, and of all its greatness there re- 
 mained to Ribe only its famed cathedral, with eight 
 centuries upon its hoary head, and its Latin School. 
 Of the castle of the Valdemars there was left only 
 this green hill with solemn sheep browsing upon it 
 and ba-a-a-ing into the sunset. In the moats, where 
 once ships sailed in from the sea, great billowy 
 masses of reeds ever bent and swayed under the 
 west wind that swept over the meadows. They 
 
6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 grew much taller than our heads, and we boys 
 loved to play in them, to track the tiger or the 
 grizzly to its lair, not without creeping shudders at 
 the peril that might lie in ambush at the next turn ; 
 or, hidden deep down among them, we lay and 
 watched the white clouds go overhead and listened 
 to the reeds whispering of the great days and 
 deeds that were. 
 
 The castle hill was the only high ground about 
 the town. It was said in some book of travel that 
 
 
 Ribe, from the Castle Hill. 
 
 one might see twenty-four miles in any direction 
 from Ribe, lying flat on one's back ; but that was 
 drawing the long bow. Flat the landscape was, 
 undeniably. From the top of the castle hill we 
 could see the sun setting upon the sea, and the 
 islands lying high in fine weather, as if floating in 
 the air, the Nibs winding its silvery way throuo-h 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 7 
 
 the green fields. Not a tree, hardly a house, hin- 
 dered the view. It was grass, all grass, for miles, 
 to the sand dunes and the beach. Strangers went 
 into ecstasy over the little woodland patch down by 
 the Long Bridge, and very sweet and pretty it was ; 
 but to me, who was born there, the wide view to the 
 sea, the green meadows, with the lonesome flight 
 of the shore-birds and the curlew's call in the 
 night-watches, were dearer far, with all their melan- 
 choly. More than mountains in their majesty ; 
 more, infinitely more, than the city of teeming 
 millions with all its wealth and might, they seem 
 to me to typify human freedom and the struggle 
 for it. Thence came the vikings that roved the 
 seas, serving no man as master; and through the 
 dark ages of feudalism no lord long bent the neck 
 of those stout yeomen to the yoke. Germany, for- 
 getting honor, treaties, and history, is trying to do 
 it now in Slesvig, south of the Nibs, and she will as 
 surely fail. The day of long-delayed justice, when 
 dynasties by the grace of God shall have been re- 
 placed by government by right of the people, will 
 find them unconquered still. 
 
 Alas ! I am afraid that thirty years in the land of 
 my children's birth have left me as much of a Dane 
 as ever. I no sooner climb the castle hill than I am 
 fighting tooth and nail the hereditary foes of my 
 people whom it was built high to bar. Yet, would 
 
8 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 you have it otherwise ? What sort of a husband is 
 the man going to make who begins by pitching his 
 old mother out of the door to make room for his 
 wife ? And what sort of a wife would she be to 
 ask or to stand it ? 
 
 But I was speaking of the tenement by the moat. 
 It was a ramshackle, two-story affair with shiftless 
 tenants and ragged children. Looking back now, 
 I think likely it was the contrast of its desolation 
 with the green hill and the fields I loved, of its 
 darkness and human misery and inefficiency with 
 the valiant fighting men of my boyish dreams, that 
 so impressed me. I believe it because it is so now. 
 Over against the tenement that we fight in our 
 cities ever rises in my mind the fields, the woods, 
 God's open sky, as accuser and witness that His 
 temple is being so defiled, man so dwarfed in body 
 and soul. 
 
 I know that Rag Hall displeased me very much. 
 I presume there must have been something of an 
 inquiring Yankee twist to my make-up, for the boys 
 called me " Jacob the delver," mainly because of my 
 constant bothering with the sewerage of our house, 
 which was of the most primitive kind. An open 
 gutter that was full of rats led under the house to 
 the likewise open gutter of the street. That was 
 all there was of it, and very bad it was ; but it had 
 always been so, and as, consequently, it could <not 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 
 
 The View the Stork got of the Old Town. 
 
 be otherwise, my energies spent themselves in un- 
 ending warfare with those rats, whose nests choked 
 the gutter. I could hardly have been over twelve 
 or thirteen when Rag Hall challenged my resent- 
 ment. My methods in dealing with it had at least 
 the merit of directness, if they added nothing to the 
 sum of human knowledge or happiness. I had re- 
 ceived a "mark," which was a coin like our silver 
 quarter, on Christmas Eve, and I hied myself to 
 Rag Hall at once to divide it with the poorest 
 family there, on the express condition that they 
 should tidy up things, especially those children, and 
 generally change their way of living. The man 
 took the money — I have a vague recollection of 
 
lO 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 seeing a stunned look on his face — and, I believe, 
 brousfht it back to our house to see if it was all 
 right, thereby giving me great offence. But he did 
 the best for himself that way, for so Rag Hall came 
 under the notice of my mother too. And there 
 really was some whitewashing done, and the chil- 
 
 The Domkirke. 
 
 dren were cleaned up for a season. So that the 
 eight skilling were, if not wisely, yet well invested, 
 after all. 
 
 No doubt Christmas had something to do with 
 it. Poverty and misery always seem to jar more at 
 the time when the whole world makes merry. We 
 took an entire week off to keep Christmas in. Til'. 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 1 1 
 
 after New Year's Day no one thought of anything 
 else. The " Holy Eve " was the greatest of the 
 year. Then the Domkirke shone with a thousand 
 wax candles that made the gloom in the deep re- 
 cesses behind the granite pillars seem deeper still, 
 and brought out the picture of the Virgin Mary 
 and her child, long hidden under the whitewash of 
 
 Within the Domkirke. 
 
 the Reformation, and so preserved to our day by 
 the very means taken to destroy it. The people 
 sang the dear old hymns about the child cradled in 
 the manger, and mother's tears fell in her hymn- 
 book. Dear old mother ! She had a house full, 
 and little enough to manage with ; but never one 
 went hungry or unhelped from her door. I am a 
 believer in organized, systematic charity upon the 
 evidence of my senses ; but — I am glad we have 
 
12 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 that one season in which we can forget our prin- 
 ciples and err on the side of mercy, that Uttle cor- 
 ner in the days of the dying year for sentiment and 
 no questions asked. No need to be afraid. It 
 is safe. Christmas charity never corrupts. Love 
 keeps it sweet and good — the love He brought 
 into the world at Christmas to temper the hard 
 reason of man. Let it loose for that little spell. 
 January comes soon enough with its long cold. 
 Always it seems to me the longest month in the 
 year. It is so far to another Christmas ! 
 
 To say that Ribe was an old town hardly de- 
 scribes it to readers at this day. A town might be 
 old and yet have kept step with time. In my day 
 Ribe had not. It had never changed its step or 
 its ways since whale-oil lanterns first hung in iron 
 chains across its cobblestone-paved streets to light 
 them at night. There they hung yet, every rusty 
 link squeaking dolefully in the wind that never 
 ceased blowing from the sea. Coal-oil, just come 
 from America, was regarded as a dangerous inno- 
 vation. I remember buying a bottle of " Pennsyl- 
 vania oil " at the grocer's for eight skilling, as a 
 doubtful domestic experiment. Steel pens had 
 not crowded out the old-fashioned goose-quill, and 
 pen-knives meant just what their name implies. 
 Matches were yet of the future. We carried tinder- . 
 boxes to strike fire with. People shook their heads 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 
 
 13 
 
 at the telegraph. The day of the stage-coach was 
 not yet past. Steamboat and railroad had not come 
 within forty miles of the town, and only one steam 
 factory — a cotton mill that was owned by Eliza- 
 beth's father. At the time of the beginning of 
 my story, he, having 
 made much money 
 during the early years 
 of the American war 
 through foresight in 
 having supplied him- 
 self with cotton, was 
 building another and 
 larger, and I helped 
 to put it up. Of 
 progress and enter- 
 prise he held an ab- 
 solute monopoly in 
 Ribe, and though he 
 employed more than 
 half of its working 
 force, it is not far from the truth that he was 
 unpopular on that account. It could not be well 
 otherwise in a town whose militia company yet 
 drilled with flint-lock muskets. Those we had in 
 the school for the use of the big boys — dreadful 
 old blunderbusses of the pre-Napoleonic era — were 
 of the same pattern. I remember the fright that 
 
 Mother. 
 
14 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 seized our worthy rector when the German army 
 was approaching in the winter of 1863, and the 
 haste they made to pack them all up in a box and 
 send them out to be sunk in the deep, lest they fall 
 into the hands of the enemy; and the consterna- 
 tion that sat upon their faces when they saw the 
 Prussian needle-guns. 
 
 The watchmen still cried the hour at night. 
 They do, for that matter, yet. The railroad came 
 to town and the march of improvement struck it, 
 after I had gone away. Century-old institutions 
 were ruthlessly upset. The police force, which in 
 my boyhood consisted of a man and a half — that 
 is, one with a wooden leg — was increased and 
 uniformed, and the night watchmen's chant was 
 stopped. But there are limits to everything. The 
 town that had been waked every hour of the night 
 since the early Middle Ages to be told that it slept 
 soundly, could not possibly take a night's rest with- 
 out it. It lay awake dreading all sorts of vmknown 
 disasters. Universal insomnia threatened it; and 
 within a month, on petition of the entire commu- 
 nity, the council restored the songsters, and they 
 squeak to this day. This may sound like exaggera- 
 tion; but it is not. It is a faithful record of what 
 took place and stands so upon the official minutes 
 of the municipality. 
 
 When I was in Denmark last year, I looked over 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 
 
 15 
 
 some of those old reports, and had more than one 
 melancholy laugh at the account of measures taken 
 for the defence of Ribe at the first assault of the 
 Germans in 1849. That was the year I was born, 
 Ribe, being a border town -on the line of the 
 coveted territory, set about arming itself to resist 
 invasion. The citizens built barricades in the 
 
 The Deserted Quay. 
 
 streets — one of them, with wise forethought, in 
 front of the drug store, " in case any one were to 
 faint" and stand in .need of Hoffman's drops or 
 smelling-salts. The women filled kettles with hot 
 water in the houses flanking an eventual advance. 
 " Two hundred pounds of powder " were ordered 
 from the next town by foot-post, and a cannon that 
 had stood half buried a hundred years, serving for a 
 hitching-post, was dug up and put into commission. 
 
l6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 There being a scarcity of guns, the curate of the 
 next village reported arming his host with spears 
 and battle-axes as the next best thing. A rumor of 
 a sudden advance of the enemy sent the mothers 
 with babes in arms scurrying north for safety. My 
 mother was among them. I was a month old 
 at the time. Thirty years later I battled for 
 the mastery in the police office in Mulberry 
 Street with a reporter for the Staats-Zeitu7tg whom 
 I discovered to be one of those invaders, and I 
 took it out of him in revenge. Old Cohen carried 
 a Danish bullet in his arm to remind him of his 
 early ill-doings. But it was not fired in defence of 
 Ribe. That collapsed when a staff officer of the 
 government, who had been sent out to report upon 
 the zeal of the Ribe men, declared that the town 
 could be defended only by damming the river and 
 flooding the meadows, which would cost two hun- 
 dred daler. The minutes of the council represent 
 that that was held to be too great a price to pay for 
 the privilege of being sacked, perhaps, as a cap- 
 tured town ; and the citizen army disbanded. 
 
 If the coming of the invading army could have 
 been timed to suit, the sea, which from old was the 
 bulwark of the nation, might have completed the 
 defences of Ribe without other expense to it than 
 that of repairing damages. Two or three times a 
 year, usually in the fall, when it blew long and 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 
 
 17 
 
 hard from the northwest, it broke in over the low 
 meadows and flooded the country as far as the eye 
 could reach. Then the high causeways were the 
 refuge of evei"ything that lived in the fields ; hares, 
 mice, foxes, and partridges huddled there, shivering 
 in the shower of spray that shot over the road, and 
 making such stand as they could against the fierce 
 
 ^ ) 
 
 s ? 
 
 
 Downstream, where Ships sailed once. 
 
 blast. If the " storm flood " came early in the sea- 
 son, before the cattle had been housed, there was a 
 worse story to tell. Then the town butcher went 
 upon the causeway at daybreak with the implements 
 of his trade to save if possible, by letting the blood, 
 at least the meat of drowned cattle and sheep that 
 were cast up by the sea. When it rose higher and 
 washed over the road, the mail-coach picked its way 
 
1 8 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 warily between white posts set on both sides to 
 guide it safe. We boys caught fish in the streets 
 of the town, while red tiles flew from the roofs all 
 about us, and we enjoyed ourselves hugely. It was 
 part of the duty of the watchmen who cried the 
 hours to give warning if the sea came in suddenly 
 during the night. And when we heard it we 
 shivered in our beds with gruesome delight. 
 
 The people of Ribe were of three classes : the 
 officials, the tradesmen, and the working people. 
 The bishop, the burgomaster, and the rector of the 
 Latin School headed the first class, to which my 
 father belonged as the senior master in the school. 
 Elizabeth's father easily led the second class. For 
 the third, it had no leaders and nothing to say at 
 that time. On state occasions lines were quite 
 sharply drawn between the classes, but the general 
 kindliness of the people caused them at ordinary 
 times to be so relaxed that the difference was 
 hardly to be noticed. Theirs was a real neigh- 
 borliness that roamed unrestrained and without 
 prejudice until brought up with a round turn at 
 the barrier of traditional orthodoxy. I remember 
 well one instance of that kind. There lived in our 
 town a single family of Jews, well-to-do trades- 
 people, gentle and good, and socially popular. There 
 lived also a Gentile woman of wealth, a mother in 
 the strictly Lutheran Israel, who fed and clothed 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 19 
 
 the poor and did no end of good. She was a very 
 pious woman. It so happened that the Jewess and 
 the Christian were old friends. But one day they 
 strayed upon dangerous ground. The Jewess saw 
 it and tried to turn the conversation from the 
 forbidden topic. 
 
 " Well, dear friend," she said, soothingly, " some 
 day, when we meet in heaven, we shall all know 
 better." 
 
 The barrier was reached. Her friend fairly 
 bristled as she made reply: 
 
 " What ! Our heaven } No, indeed ! We may 
 
 be good friends here, Mrs , but there — really, 
 
 you will have to excuse me." 
 
 Narrow streams are apt to run deep. An inci- 
 dent which I set down in justice to the uncom- 
 promising orthodoxy of that day, made a strong 
 impression on me. The two concerned in it were 
 my uncle, a generous, bright, even a brilliant man, 
 but with no great bump of reverence, and the deacon 
 in the village church where they lived. He was 
 the exact opposite of my uncle : hard, unlovely, but 
 deeply religious. The two were neighbors and 
 quarrelled about their fence-line. For months they 
 did not speak. On Sunday the deacon strode by 
 on his way to church, and my uncle, who stayed 
 home, improved the opportunity to point out of 
 what stuff those Pharisees were made, much to 
 
20 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 A Cobblestone-paved Alley. 
 
 his own edification. Easter week came. In Den- 
 mark it is, or was, custom to go to communion 
 once a year, on Holy Thursday, if at no other sea- 
 son, and, I might add, rarely at any other. On 
 Wednesday night, the deacon appeared, unbidden, 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 21 
 
 at my uncle's door, craving an interview. If a 
 spectre had suddenly walked in, I do not suppose 
 he could have lost his wits more completely. He 
 recovered them with an effort, and bidding his 
 guest welcome, led him courteously to his office. 
 
 From that interview he came forth a changed 
 man. Long years after I heard the full story of 
 it from my uncle's own lips. It was simple enough. 
 The deacon said that duty called him to the com- 
 munion table on the morrow, and that he could not 
 reconcile it with his conscience to go with hate 
 toward his neighbor in his heart. Hence he had 
 come to tell him that he might have the line as 
 he claimed it. The spark struck fire. Then and 
 there they made up and were warm friends, though 
 agreeing in nothing, till they died. " The faith," 
 said my uncle in telling of it, " that could work in 
 that way upon such a nature, is not to be made 
 light of." And he never did after that. He died 
 a believing man. 
 
 It may be that it contributed something to the 
 ordinarily democratic relations of the upper-class 
 men and the tradespeople that the latter were 
 generally well-to-do, while the officials mostly had 
 a running fight of it with their incomes. My 
 father's salary had to reach around to a family of 
 fourteen, nay, fifteen, for he took his dead sister's 
 child when a baby and brought her up with us, who 
 
22 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 were boys all but one. Father had charge of 
 the Latin form, and this, with a sense of grim 
 humor, caused him, I suppose, to check his children 
 off with the Latin numerals, as it were. The sixth 
 was baptized Sextus, the ninth Nonus, though they 
 were not called so, and he was dissuaded from 
 calling the twelfth Duodecimus only by the cer- 
 tainty that the other boys would miscall him " Dozen." 
 How I escaped Tertius I don't know. Probably 
 the scheme had not been thought of then. Poor 
 father! Of the whole fourteen but one lived to 
 realize his hopes of a professional career, only to 
 die when he had just graduated from the medical 
 school. My oldest brother went to sea; Sophus, 
 the doctor, was the next ; and I, when it came my 
 time to study in earnest, refused flatly and declared 
 my wish to learn the carpenter's trade. Not till 
 thirty years after did I know how deep the wound 
 was I struck my father then. He had set his heart 
 upon my making a literary career, and though he 
 was very far from lacking sympathy with the work- 
 ingman — I rather think that he was the one link 
 between the upper and lower strata in our town in 
 that way, enjoying the most hearty respect of both 
 — yet it was a sad disappointment to him. It was 
 in 1893, when I saw him for the last time, that I 
 found it out, by a chance remark he dropped when 
 sitting with my first book, " How the Other Half 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 
 
 23 
 
 Lives," in his hand, and also the sacrifice he had 
 
 made of his own literary ambitions to eke out by 
 
 hack editorial work on the local newspaper a living 
 
 for his large family. As for me, I would have been 
 
 repaid for the labor of writing a thousand books by 
 
 witnessing the pride 
 
 he took in mine. 
 
 There was at last a 
 
 man of letters in the 
 
 family, though he 
 
 came by a road not 
 
 down on the official 
 
 map. 
 
 Crying over spilt 
 milk was not my 
 father's fashion, how- 
 ever. If I was to be a 
 carpenter, there was 
 a good one in town, 
 to whom I was forth- 
 with apprenticed for 
 a year. During that time, incidentally, I might 
 make up my mind, upon the evidence of my re- 
 duced standing, that school was, after all, to be 
 preferred. And thus it was that I came to be a 
 working boy helping build her proud father's factory 
 at the time I fell head over heels in love with sweet 
 Elizabeth. Certainly I had taken no easy road to 
 
 Father. 
 
24 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the winning of my way and my bride ; so reasoned 
 the town, which presently took note of my infatua- 
 tion. But, then, it laughed, there was time enough. 
 I was fifteen and she was not thirteen. There was 
 time enough, oh, yes! Only I did not think so. 
 My courtship proceeded at a tumultuous pace, 
 which first made the town laugh, then put it out of 
 patience and made some staid matrons express the 
 desire to box my ears soundly. It must be owned 
 that if courting were generally done on the plan I 
 adopted, there would be little peace and less safety 
 all around. When she came playing among the 
 lumber where we were working, as she naturally 
 would, danger dogged my steps. I carry a scar on 
 the shin-bone made with an adze I should have been 
 minding when I was looking after her. The fore- 
 finger on my left hand has a stiff joint. I cut that 
 off with an axe when she was dancing on a beam 
 close by. Though it was put on again by a clever 
 surgeon and kept on, I have never had the use of it 
 since. But what did a finger matter, or ten, when 
 she was only there ! Once I fell off the roof when 
 I must crane my neck to see her go around the 
 corner. But I hardly took note of those things, 
 except to enlist her sympathy by posing as a 
 wounded hero with my arm in a sling at the 
 dancing-school which I had joined on purpose to 
 dance with her. I was the biggest boy there, and 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 25 
 
 therefore first to choose a partner, and I remember 
 even now the snickering of the school when I went 
 right over and took EHzabeth. She flushed angrily, 
 but I didn't care. That was what I was there for, 
 and I had her now. I didn't let her go again, 
 either, though the teacher delicately hinted that 
 we were not a good match. She was the best 
 dancer in the school, and I was the worst. Not a 
 good match, hey ! That was as much as she knew 
 about it. 
 
 It was at the ball that closed the dancing-school 
 that I excited the strong desire of the matrons to 
 box my ears by ordering Elizabeth's father off the 
 floor when he tried to join in before midnight, the 
 time set for the elders to take charge. I was floor 
 committee, but how I could do such a thing passes 
 my understanding, except on the principle laid down 
 by Mr. Dooley that when a man is in love he is 
 looking for fight all around. I must have been, for 
 they had to hold me back by main strength from 
 running away to the army that was fighting a losing 
 fight with two Great Powers that winter. Though 
 I was far under age, I was a big boy, and might 
 have passed ; but the hasty retreat of our brave little 
 band before overwhelming odds settled it. With 
 the echoes of the scandal caused by the ball episode 
 still ringing, I went off to Copenhagen to serve out 
 my apprenticeship there with a great builder whose 
 
26 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 name I saw among the dead in the paper only the 
 other day. He was ever a good friend to me. 
 
 The third day after I reached the capital, which 
 happened to be my birthday, I had appointed a 
 meeting with my student brother at the art exhibi- 
 tion in the palace of Charlottenborg. I found two 
 
 My Childhood's Home. 
 
 stairways running up from the main entrance, and 
 was debating in my mind which to take, when a 
 handsome gentleman in a blue overcoat asked, with 
 a slight foreign accent, if he could help me. I told 
 him my trouble, and we went up together. 
 
 We walked slowly and carried on quite an ani- 
 mated conversation ; that is to say, I did. His part 
 of it was confined mostly to questions, which I was 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 27 
 
 no way loth to answer. I told him about myself 
 and my plans ; about the old school, and about my 
 father, whom I took it for granted he knew ; for was 
 he not the oldest teacher in the school, and the wis- 
 est, as all Ribe could testify ? He listened to it all 
 with a curious little smile, and nodded in a very 
 pleasant and sympathetic way which I liked to see. 
 I told him so, and that I liked the people of Copen- 
 hagen well ; they seemed so kind to a stranger, and 
 he put his hand on my arm and patted it in a 
 friendly manner that was altogether nice. So we 
 arrived together at the door where the red lackey 
 stood. 
 
 He bowed very deep as we entered, and I bowed 
 back, and told my friend that there was an example 
 of it ; for I had never seen the man before. At 
 which he laughed outright, and, pointing to a door, 
 said I would find my brother in there, and bade me 
 good-by. He was gone before I could shake hands 
 with him; but just then my brother came up, and I 
 forgot about him in my admiration of the pictures. 
 
 We were resting in one of the rooms an hour 
 later, and I was going over the events of the day, 
 telling all about the kind stranger, when in he came, 
 and nodded, smiling at me. 
 
 " There he is," I cried, and nodded too. To my 
 surprise, Sophus got up with a start and salaamed 
 in haste. 
 
28 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 " Good gracious ! " he said, when the stranger was 
 gone. " You don't mean to say he was your guide ? 
 Why, that was the King, boy ! " 
 
 I was never so astonished in my hfe and expect 
 never to be again. I had only known kings from 
 Hans Christian Andersen's story books, where they 
 always went in coronation robes, with long train 
 and pages, and with gold crowns on their heads. 
 That a king could go around in a blue overcoat, like 
 any other man, was a real shock to me that I didn't 
 get over for a while. But when I got to know more 
 of King Christian, I liked him all the better for 
 it. You couldn't help that anyhow. His people 
 call him " the good king " with cause. He is that. 
 
 Speaking of Hans Christian Andersen, we boys 
 loved him as a matter of course ; for had he not 
 told us all the beautiful stories that made the whole 
 background of our lives.'' They do that yet with 
 me, more than you would think. The little Christ- 
 mas tree and the hare that made it weep by jumping 
 over it because it was so small, belong to the things 
 that come to stay with you always. I hear of people 
 nowadays who think it is not proper to tell children 
 fairy-stories. I am sorry for those children. I wonder 
 what they will give them instead. Algebra, perhaps. 
 Nice lot of counting machines we shall have running 
 the century that is to come ! But though we loved 
 Andersen, we were not above playing our pranks 
 
THE MEETING \ON THE LONG BRIDGE 29 
 
 upon him when occasion offered. In those days 
 Copenhagen was girt about with great earthen 
 walls, and there were beautiful walks up there 
 under the old lindens. On moonlight nights when 
 the smell of violets was in the air, we would some- 
 times meet the poet there, walking alone. Then 
 we would string out irreverently in Indian file 
 and walk up, cap in hand, one after another, to sa- 
 lute him with a deeply respectful " Good evening, 
 Herr Professor ! " That was his title. His kind 
 face would beam with delight, and our proffered 
 fists would be buried in the very biggest hand, it 
 seemed to us, that mortal ever owned, — Andersen 
 had very large hands and feet, — and we would go 
 away gleefully chuckling and withal secretly ashamed 
 of ourselves, He was in such evident delight at 
 our homage. 
 
 They used to tell a story of Andersen at the time 
 that made the whole town laugh in its sleeve, though 
 there was not a bit of malice in it. No one had 
 anything but the sincerest affection for the poet in 
 my day ; his storm and stress period was then long 
 past. He was, it was said, greatly afraid of being 
 buried alive. So that it might not happen, he care- 
 fully pinned a paper to his blanket every night 
 before he went to sleep, on which was written : " I 
 guess I am only in a trance."^ Needless to say, 
 
 1 In Danish : " Jeg er vist skind6d." 
 
30 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 he was in no danger. When he fell into his long 
 sleep, the whole country, for that matter the whole 
 world, stood weeping at his bier. 
 
 Four years I dreamt away in Copenhagen while 
 I learned my trade. The intervals when I was 
 awake were when she came to the town on a visit 
 with her father, or, later, to finish her education 
 at a fashionable school. I mind the first time she 
 came. I was at the depot, and I rode with her on 
 the back of their coach, unknown to them. So 
 I found out what hotel they were to stay at. I 
 called the next day, and purposely forgot my 
 gloves. Heaven knows where I got them from — 
 probably borrowed them. Those were not days for 
 gloves. Her father sent them to my address the 
 next day with a broad hint that, having been neigh- 
 borly, I needn't call again. He was getting square 
 for the ball. But my wife says that I was never 
 good at taking a hint, except in the way of business, 
 as a reporter. I kept the run of her all the time 
 she was in the city. She did not always see me, 
 but I saw her, and that was enough. I watched 
 her home from school in the e\'ening, and was 
 content, though she was escorted by a cadet with 
 a pig-sticker at his side. He was her cousin, and 
 had given me his word that he cared nothing about 
 her. He is a commodore and King Christian's 
 Secretary of Navy now. When she was sick, I 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 31 
 
 pledged my Sunday trousers for a dollar and bought 
 her a bouquet of flowers which they teased her about 
 until she cried and threw it away. And all the time 
 she was getting more beautiful and more lovable. 
 She was certainly, the handsomest girl in Copen- 
 hagen, which is full of charming women. 
 
 There were long spells when she was away, and 
 when I dreamt on undisturbed. It was during one 
 of these that I went to the theatre with my brother 
 to see a famous play in which an assassin tried to 
 murder the heroine, who was asleep in an arm- 
 chair. Now, this heroine was a well-known actress 
 who looked singularly like Elizabeth. As she sat 
 there with the long curls sweeping her graceful 
 neck, in imminent danger of being killed, I forgot 
 where I was, what it was, all and everything except 
 that danger threatened Elizabeth, and sprang to my 
 feet with a loud cry of murder, trying to make for 
 the stage. My brother struggled to hold me back. 
 There was a sensation in the theatre, and the play 
 was held up while they put me out. I remember 
 King George of Greece eying me from his box as I 
 was being transported to the door, and the rascal 
 murderer on the stage looking as if he had done 
 something deserving of praise. Outside, in the 
 cold, my brother shook me up and took me home, 
 a sobered and somewhat crestfallen lad. But, any- 
 how, I don't like that kind of play. I don't see why 
 
32 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the villain on the stage is any better than the vil- 
 lain on the street. There are enough of them and 
 to spare. And think if he had killed her ! 
 
 The years passed, and the day came at last when, 
 having proved my fitness, I received my certificate 
 as a duly enrolled carpenter of the guild of Copen- 
 hagen, and, dropping my tools joyfully and in 
 haste, made a bee-line for Ribe, where she was. 
 I thought that I had moved with very stealthy 
 steps toward my goal, having grown four years 
 older than at the time I set the whole community 
 by the ears. But it could not have been so, fpr I 
 had not been twenty-four hours in town before it was 
 all over that I had come home to propose to Eliza- 
 beth ; which was annoying but true. By the same 
 sort of sorcery the town knew in another day that 
 she had refused me, and all the wise heads wagged 
 and bore witness that they could have told me so. 
 What did I, a common carpenter, want at the 
 " castle " ? That was what they called her father's 
 house. He had other plans for his pretty daughter. 
 
 As for Elizabeth, poor child ! she was not yet 
 seventeen, and was easily persuaded that it was all 
 wrong ; she wept, and in the goodness of her gentle 
 heart was truly sorry ; and I kissed her hands and 
 went out, my eyes brimming over with tears, feeling 
 that there was nothing in all the wide world for me 
 any more, and that the farther I went from her 
 
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE 
 
 33 
 
 the better. So it was settled that I should go to 
 America. Her mother gave me a picture of her 
 and a lock of her hair, and thereby roused the wrath 
 of the dowagers once more ; for why should I 
 be breaking my 
 heart over Eliza- 
 beth in foreign 
 parts, since she 
 was not for me ? 
 Ah, but mothers 
 know better ! I 
 lived on that pic- 
 ture and that curl 
 six long years. 
 
 One May morn- 
 ingmy own mother 
 went to the stage- 
 . coach with me to 
 see me off on my 
 long journey. Father stayed home. He was ever 
 a man who, with the tenderest of hearts, put on an 
 appearance of great sternness lest he betray it. 
 God rest his soul ! That nothing that I have done 
 caused him greater grief in his life than the separa- 
 tion that day is sweet comfort to me now. He 
 lived to take Elizabeth to his heart, a beloved 
 daughter. For me, I had been that morning, long 
 before the sun rose, under her window to bid her 
 
 The Picture her Mother gave me. 
 
34 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 good-by, but she did not know it. The servants 
 did, though, and told her of it when she got up. 
 And she, girl-hke, said, " Well, I didn't ask him to 
 come ; " but in her secret soul I think there was a 
 small regret that she did not see me go. 
 
 So I went out in the world to seek my fortune, 
 the richer for some $40 which Ribe friends 
 had presented to me, knowing that I had barely 
 enough to pay my passage over in the steerage. 
 Though I had aggravated them in a hundred ways 
 and wholly disturbed the peace of the old town, I 
 think they liked me a little, anyway. They were 
 always good, kind neighbors, honest and lovable 
 folk. I looked back with my mother's blessing yet 
 in my ears, to where the gilt weather-vanes glis- 
 tened on her father's house, and the tears brimmed 
 over again. And yet, such is life, presently I felt 
 my heart bound with a new courage. All was not 
 lost yet. The world was before me. But yester- 
 day the chance befell that, in going to communion 
 in the old Domkirke, I knelt beside her at the altar 
 rail. I thought of that and dried my eyes. God 
 is good. He did not lay it up against me. When 
 next we met there, we knelt to be made man and 
 wife, for better or worse ; blessedly, gloriously for 
 better, forever and aye, and all our troubles were 
 over. For had we not one another? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 I LAND IN NEW YORK AND TAKE A HAND IN THE 
 
 GAME 
 
 The steamer Iowa, from Glasgow, made port, 
 after a long and stormy voyage, on Whitsunday, 
 1870. She had come up during the night, and cast 
 anchor off Castle Garden. It was a beautiful 
 spring morning, and as I looked over the rail at 
 the miles of straight streets, the green heights of 
 Brooklyn, and the stir of ferryboats and pleasure 
 craft on the river, my hopes rose high that some- 
 where in this teeming hive there would be a place 
 for me. What kind of a place I had myself no clear 
 notion of. I would let that work out as it could. Of 
 course I had my trade to fall back on. but I am afraid 
 that is all the use I thought of putting it to. The love 
 of change belongs to youth, and I meant to take a hand 
 in things as they came along. I had a pair of strong 
 hands, and stubbornness enough to do for two ; 
 also a strong belief that in a free country, free from 
 the dominion of custom, of caste, as well as of men, 
 things would somehow come right in the end, 
 and a man get shaken into the corner where he 
 
 35 
 
36 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 belonged if he took a hand in the game. I think I 
 was right in that. If it took a lot of shaking to 
 get me where I belonged, that was just what I 
 needed. Even my mother admits that now. To 
 tell the truth, I was tired of hammer and saw. 
 They were indissolubly bound up with my dreams 
 of Elizabeth that were now gone to smash. There- 
 fore I hated them. And straightway, remembering 
 that the day was her birthday, and accepting the 
 fact as a good omen, I rebuilt my air-castles and 
 resolved to try on a new tack. So irrational is 
 human nature at twenty-one, when in love. And 
 isn't it good that it is ? 
 
 In all of which I have made no account of a 
 factor which is at the bottom of half our troubles 
 with our immigrant population, so far as they are 
 not of our own making : the loss of reckoning that 
 follows uprooting; the cutting loose from all sense 
 of responsibility, with the old standards gone, that 
 makes the politician's job so profitable in our large 
 cities, and that of the patriot and the housekeeper 
 so wearisome. We all know the process. The 
 immigrant has no patent on it. It afiflicts the 
 native, too, when he goes to a town where he is not 
 known. In the slum it reaches its climax in the sec- 
 ond generation, and makes of the Irishman's and the 
 Italian's boys the " toughs " who fight the battles 
 of Hell's Kitchen and Frog Hollow. It simply 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 37 
 
 means that we are creatures of environment, that a 
 man everywhere is largely what his neighbors and 
 his children think him to be, and that government 
 makes for our moral good too, dreamers and 
 anarchists to the contrary notwithstanding. But, 
 simple as it is, it has been too long neglected for 
 the safety of the man and of the State. I am not 
 going to discuss here plans for mending this 
 neglect, but I can think of three that would work ; 
 one of them does work, if not up to the top notch 
 
 — the public school. In its ultimate development 
 as the neighborhood centre of things, I would have 
 that the first care of city government, always and 
 everywhere, at whatever expense. An efficient 
 parish districting is another. I think we are com- 
 ing to that. The last is a rigid annual enrolment 
 
 — the school census is good, but not good enough 
 
 — for vaccination purposes, jury duty, for military 
 purposes if you please. I do not mean for conscrip- 
 tion, but for the ascertainment of the fighting 
 strength of the State in case of need — for any- 
 thing that would serve as an excuse. It is the en- 
 rolment itself that I think would have a good effect 
 in making the man feel that he is counted on for 
 something; that he belongs as it were, instead of 
 standing idle and watching a procession go by, in 
 which there is no place f6r him ; which is only 
 another way of saying that it is his right to harass 
 
38 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 it and levy tribute as he can. Tlie enrolment for 
 voting comes too late. By that time he may have 
 Joined the looters' army. 
 
 So as properly to take my own place in the pro- 
 cession, if not in the army referred to, as I con- 
 ceived the custom of the country to be, I made it 
 my first business to buy a navy revolver of the 
 largest size, investing in the purchase exactly one- 
 half of my capital. I strapped the weapon on the 
 outside of my coat and strode up Broadway, con- 
 scious that I was following the fashion of the 
 country. I knew it upon the authority of a man 
 who had been there before me and had returned, a 
 gold digger in the early days of California ; but 
 America was America to us. We knew no dis- 
 tinction of West and East. By rights there ought 
 to have been buffaloes and red Indians charging 
 up and down Broadway. I am sorry to say that 
 it is easier even to-day to make lots of people over 
 there believe that, than that New York is paved, 
 and lighted with electric Hghts, and quite as civil- 
 ized as Copenhagen. They will have it that it is 
 in the wilds. I saw none of the signs of this, but 
 I encountered a friendly policeman, who, sizing 
 me and my pistol up, tapped it gently with his club 
 and advised me to leave it home, or I might get 
 robbed of it. This, at first blush, seemed to con- 
 firm my apprehensions; but he was a very nice 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 39 
 
 policeman, and took time to explain, seeing that 
 I was very green. And I took his advice and put 
 the revolver away, secretly relieved to get rid of it. 
 It was quite heavy to carry around. 
 
 I had letters to the Danish Consul and to the 
 President of the American Banknote Company, 
 Mr. Goodall. I think perhaps he was not then the 
 president, but became so afterward. Mr. Goodall 
 had once been wrecked on the Danish coast and 
 rescued by the captain of the lifesaving crew, a 
 friend of my family. But they were both in 
 Europe, and in just four days I realized that there 
 was no special public clamor for my services in 
 New York, and decided to go West. A mis- 
 sionary in Castle Garden was getting up a gang 
 of men for the Brady's Bend Iron Works on the 
 Allegheny River, and I went along. We started 
 a full score, with tickets paid, but only two of us 
 reached the Bend. The rest calmly deserted in 
 Pittsburg and went their own way. Now here was an 
 instance of what I have just been saying. Not one 
 of them, probably, would have thought of doing it 
 on the other side. They would have carried out 
 their contract as a matter of course. Here they 
 broke it as a matter of course, the minute it didn't 
 suit them to sfo on. Two of them had been on 
 our steamer, and the thought of them makes me 
 laugh even now. One was a Dane who carried 
 
40 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 an immense knapsack that was filled with sausages, 
 cheese, and grub of all kinds when he came aboard. 
 He never let go of it for a moment on the voyage. 
 In storm and sunshine he was there, shouldering 
 his knapsack. I think he slept with it. When I 
 last saw him hobbling down a side street in Pitts- 
 burg, he carried it still, but one end of it hung limp 
 and hungry, and the other was as lean as a bad 
 year. The other voyager was a jovial Swede whose 
 sole baggage consisted of an old musket, a black- 
 thorn stick, and a barometer glass, tied up together. 
 The glass, he explained, was worth keeping; it 
 might some day make an elegant ruler. The 
 fellow was a blacksmith, and I mistrust that he 
 could not write. 
 
 Adler and I went on to Brady's Bend. Adler 
 was a big, explosive German who had been a 
 reserve officer, I think, in the Prussian army. Fate 
 had linked us together when on the steamer the meat 
 served in the steerage became so bad as to offend 
 not only our palates, but our sense of smell. We got 
 up a demonstration, marching to see the captain in 
 a body, Adler and I carrying a tray of the objec- 
 tionable meat between us. As the spokesman, I 
 presented the case briefly and respectfully, and all 
 would have gone well had not the hot blood of 
 Adler risen at the wrong moment, when the captain 
 was cautiously exploring the scent of the rejected 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 
 
 41 
 
 food. With a sudden upward jerk he caused that 
 ofHcial's nose to disappear momentarily in the dish, 
 while he exploded in voluble German. The result 
 was an instant rupture of diplomatic relations. 
 Adler was put in the lock-up, but set free again 
 immediately. He spent the rest of the voyage in 
 his bunk shouting dire threats of disaster impend- 
 ing from the " Norddeutsche Consul," once he 
 
 Brady's Bend as I knew it. 
 
 reached New York. But we were all too glad to 
 get ashore to think of vengeance then. 
 
 Adler found work at the blast-furnace, while I 
 was set to building huts for the miners on the east 
 bank of the river where a clearing had been made 
 and called East Brady. On the other side of the 
 Allegheny the furnaces and rolling mills were hid- 
 den away in a narrow, winding valley that set back 
 into the forest-clad hills, growing deeper and nar- 
 
42 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 rower with every mile. It was to me, who had been 
 used to seeing the sun rise and set over a level 
 plain where the winds of heaven blew as they listed, 
 from the first like a prison. I climbed the hills 
 only to find that there were bigger hills beyond — 
 an endless sea of swelling billows of green with- 
 out a clearing in it. I spent all Sunday roaming 
 through it, miles and miles, to find an outlook from 
 which I might see the end ; but there was none. A 
 horrible fit of homesickness came upon me. The 
 days I managed to get through by working hard 
 and making observations on the American lan- 
 guage. In this I had a volunteer assistant in Julia, 
 the pretty, barefooted daughter of a coal-miner, who 
 hung around and took an interest in what was 
 going on. But she disappeared after I had asked 
 her to explain what setting one's cap for any one 
 meant. I was curious because I had heard her 
 mother say to a neighbor that Julia was doing that 
 to me. But the evenings were very lonesome. 
 The girl in our boarding-house washed dishes 
 always to one tune, " The Letter that Never Came." 
 It was not a cheerful tune and not a cheerful sub- 
 ject, for I had had no news from home since I left. 
 I can hear her yet, shrieking and clattering her 
 dishes, with the frogs yelling accompaniment in 
 the creek that mumbled in the valley. I never 
 could abide American frogs since. There is rest 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 43 
 
 in the ko-ax, ko-ax ! of its European brother, but 
 the breathless yi ! yi ! of our American frogs makes 
 me feel always as if I wanted to die — which I 
 don't. 
 
 In making the clearing, I first saw an American 
 wood-cutter swing an axe, and the sight filled me 
 with admiration for the man and the axe both. It 
 was a " double-bitter," and he a typical long-armed 
 and long-limbed backwoodsman. I also had learned 
 to use the axe, but anything like the way he swung 
 it, first over one, then over the other shoulder, mak- 
 ing it tell in long, clean cuts at every blow, I had 
 never dreamt of. It was splendid. I wished myself 
 back in Copenhagen just long enough to telh the 
 numskulls there, who were distrustful of American 
 tools, which were just beginning to come into the 
 market, that they didn't know what they were talk- 
 ing about. Of course it was reasonable that the 
 good tools should come from the country where 
 they had good use for them. 
 
 There was a settlement of honest Welshmen in 
 the back hills, and the rumor that a Dane /had come 
 into the valley reached it in due course. It brought 
 down a company of four sturdy miners, who trudged 
 five miles over bad land of a Sunday to see what I 
 was like. The Danes who live in Welsh song and 
 story must have been grievous giants, for they were 
 greatly disgusted at sight of me, and spoke their 
 
44 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 minds about it without reserve, even with some 
 severity, as if I were guilty of some sort of an impo- 
 sition on the valley. 
 
 It could hardly have been this introduction that 
 tempted me to try coal-mining. I have forgotten 
 how it came about — probably through some tem- 
 porary slackness in the building trade ; but I did 
 try, and one day was enough for me. The com- 
 pany mined its own coal. Such as it was, it cropped 
 out of the hills right and left in narrow veins, some- 
 times too shallow to work, seldom affording more 
 space to the digger than barely enough to permit 
 him to stand upright. You did not go down 
 through a shaft, but straight in through the side of 
 a hill to the bowels of the mountain, following a 
 track on which a little donkey drew the coal to the 
 mouth of the mine and sent it down the incline to 
 run up and down a hill a mile or more by its own 
 gravity before it reached the place of unloading. 
 Through one of these we marched in, Adler and I, 
 one summer morning with new pickaxes on our 
 shoulders and nasty little oil lamps fixed in our 
 hats to light us through the darkness where every 
 second we stumbled over chunks of slate rock, or 
 into pools of water that oozed through from above. 
 An old miner whose way lay past the fork in the 
 tunnel where our lead began showed us how to 
 use our picks and the timbers to brace the slate 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 45 
 
 that roofed over the vein, and left us to ourselves 
 in a chamber perhaps ten feet wide and the height 
 of a man. 
 
 We were to be paid by the ton, I forget how 
 much, but it was very little, and we lost no time 
 getting to work. We had to dig away the coal at 
 the floor with our picks, lying on our knees to do 
 it, and afterward drive wedges under the roof to 
 loosen the mass. It was hard work, and, entirely 
 inexperienced as we were, we made but little head- 
 way. As the day wore on, the darkness and silence 
 grew very oppressive, and made us start nervously 
 at the least thing. The sudden arrival of our don- 
 key with its cart gave me a dreadful fright. The 
 friendly beast greeted us with a joyous bray and 
 rubbed its shaggy sides against us in the most com- 
 panionable way. In the flickering light of my lamp 
 I caught sight of its long ears waving over me — 
 I don't believe I had seen three donkeys before in 
 my life ; there were none where I came from — and 
 heard that demoniac shriek, and I verily believe I 
 thought the evil one had come for me in person. I 
 know that I nearly fainted. 
 
 That donkey was a discerning animal. I think 
 it knew when it first set eyes on us that we were 
 not going to overwork it ; and we didn't. When, 
 toward evening, we quit work, after narrowly escap- 
 ing being killed by a large stone that fell from the 
 
46 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 roof in consequence of our neglect to brace it up 
 properly, our united efforts had resulted in barely 
 filling two of the little carts, and we had earned,' if 
 I recollect aright, something like sixty cents each. 
 The fall of the roof robbed us of all desire to try 
 mining again. It knocked the lamps from our hats, 
 and, in darkness that could almost be felt, we 
 groped our way back to the light along the track, 
 getting more badly frightened as we went. The 
 last stretch of way we ran, holding each other's 
 hands as though we were not men and miners, but 
 two frightened children in the dark. 
 
 As we emerged from the damp gap in the moun- 
 tain side, the sunset was upon the hills. Peaceful 
 sounds came up from the valley where the shadows 
 lay deep. Gangs of men were going home from 
 the day's toil to their evening rest. It seemed to 
 me that I had been dead and had come back to 
 life. The world was never so wondrous_fair. My 
 companion stood looking out over the landscape 
 with hungry eyes. Neither of us spoke, but when 
 the last gleam had died out in the window of the 
 stone church we went straight to the company's 
 store and gave up our picks. I have never set foot 
 in a coal mine since, and have not the least desire 
 to do so. 
 
 I was back in the harness of the carpenter-shop 
 when, in the middle of July, the news struck down 
 
1 LAND IN NEW YORK 47 
 
 in our quiet community like a bombshell that 
 France had declared war on Prussia; also that 
 Denmark was expected to join her forces to those 
 of her old ally and take revenge for the great rob- 
 bery of 1864. I dropped my tools the moment I 
 heard it, and flew rather than ran to the company's 
 office to demand my time ; thence to our boarding- 
 house to pack. Adler reasoned and entreated, called 
 it an insane notion, but, when he saw that nothing 
 would stop me, lent a hand in stuffing my trunk, 
 praying pathetically between pulls that his country- 
 men would make short work of me, as they certainly 
 would of France. I heeded nothing. All the hot 
 blood of youth was surging through me. I remem- 
 bered the defeat, the humiliation of the flag I loved, 
 — aye ! and love yet, for there is no flag like the flag 
 of my fathers, save only that of my children and of 
 my manhood, — and I remembered, too, Elizabeth, 
 with a sudden hope. I would be near her then, and 
 I would earn fame and glory. The caipenter would 
 come back with shoulder-straps. Perhaps then, in 
 the castle ... I shouldered my trunk and ran for 
 the station. Such tools, clothes, and things as it 
 would not hold I sold for what they would fetch, 
 and boarded the next train for Buffalo, which was 
 as far as my money would take me. 
 
 I cannot resist the temptation at this point to 
 carry the story thirty years forward to last winter, 
 
48 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 in order to point out one of the queer happenings 
 which long ago caused me to be known to my friends 
 as "the man of coincidences." I have long since 
 ceased to consider them as such, though in this one 
 there is no other present significance than that it 
 decided a point which I had been turning over in 
 
 "I found the valley deserted and dead." 
 
 my own mind, of moment to me and my publisher. 
 I was lecturing in Pittsburg at the time, and ran up 
 to take another look at Brady's Bend. I found the 
 valley deserted and dead. The mills were gone. 
 Disaster had overtaken them in the panic of 1873, 
 and all that remained of the huge plant was a tot- 
 tering stump of the chimney and clusters of vacant 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 49 
 
 houses dropping to pieces here and there. Young 
 trees grew out of the cold ashes in the blast-furnace. 
 All about was desolation. Strolling down by the 
 river with the editor of the local paper in East 
 Brady, which had grown into a slow little railroad 
 town, my eye fell upon a wrecked hut in which I 
 recognized the company's office. The shutters were 
 gone, the door hung on one hinge, and the stairs 
 had rotted away, but we climbed in somehow. It 
 was an idle quest, said my companion ; all the books 
 and papers had been sold the summer before to a 
 Pittsburg junkman, who came with a cart and pitch- 
 forked them into it as so much waste paper. His 
 trail was plain within. The floor was littered with 
 torn maps and newspapers from the second term 
 of President Grant. In a rubbish heap I kicked 
 against something more solid and picked it up. It 
 was the only book left in the place : the " draw- 
 book "for the years 1870-72; and almost the first 
 name I read was my own, as having received, on 
 July 19, 1870, ^10.63 in settlement of my account 
 with the Brady's Bend Company when I started for 
 the war. My companion stared. I wrapped up the 
 book and took it away with me. I considered that 
 I had a moral right to it ; but if anybody questions 
 it, it is at his service. 
 
 Buffalo was full of Frenchmen, but they did not 
 receive me with a torchlight procession. They even 
 
50 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 shrugged their shoulders when good old Pater Bret- 
 ton took up my cause and tried to get me forwarded 
 at least to New York. The one patriot I found to 
 applaud my high resolve was a French pawnbroker, 
 who, with many compliments and shoulder pattings, 
 took my trunk and all its contents, after I had paid 
 my board out of it, in exchange for a ticket to New 
 York. He took my watch, too, but that didn't keep 
 time. I remember seeing my brush go with a grim 
 smile. Having no clothes to brush, I had no need 
 of it any longer. That pawnbroker was an artist. 
 The year after, when I was in Buffalo again, it 
 occurred to me to go in and see if I could get back 
 any of my belongings. I was just a bit ashamed of 
 myself, and represented that I was a brother of the 
 young hothead who had gone to the war. I thought 
 I discovered a pair of trousers that had been mine 
 hanging up in his store, but the Frenchman was 
 quicker than I. His eyes followed mine, and he 
 took instant umbrage : — 
 
 " So your brother vas one shump, vas he ? " he 
 yelled. " Your brother vas a long sight better man 
 zan you, mine frient. He go fight for la France. 
 You stay here. Get out ! " And he put me out, 
 and saved the day and the trousers. 
 
 It was never a good plan for me to lie. It never 
 did work out right, not once. I have found the 
 only safe plan to be to stick to the truth and let the 
 
1 LAND IN NEW YORK 5 1 
 
 house come down if it must. It will come down 
 anyhow. 
 
 I reached New York with just one cent in my 
 pocket, and put up at a boarding-house where the 
 charge was one dollar a day. In this no moral 
 obliquity was involved. I had simply reached the 
 goal for which I had sacrificed all, and felt sure that 
 the French people or the Danish Consul would do 
 the rest quickly. But there was evidently some- 
 thing wrong somewhere. The Danish Consul 
 could only register my demand to be returned to 
 Denmark in the event of war. They have my let- 
 ter at the office yet, he tells me, and they will call 
 me out with the reserves. The French were fitting 
 out no volunteer army that I could get on the track 
 of, and nobody was paying the passage of fighting 
 men. The end of it was that, after pawning my 
 revolver and my top-boots, the only valuable pos- 
 sessions I had left, to pay for my lodging, I was 
 thrown on the street, and told to come back when I 
 had more money. That night I wandered about 
 New York with a gripsack that had only a linen 
 duster and a pair of socks in it, turning over in my 
 mind what to do next. Toward midnight I passed 
 a house in Clinton Place that was lighted up fes- 
 tively. Laughter and the hum of many voices 
 came from within. I listened. They spoke 
 French. A society of Frenchmen having their 
 
52 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 annual dinner, the watchman in the block told me. 
 There at last was my chance. I went up the steps 
 and rang the bell. A flunkey in a dress-suit opened, 
 but when he saw that I was not a guest, but to all 
 appearances a tramp, he tried to put me out. I, on 
 my part, tried to explain. There was an altercation, 
 and two gentlemen of the society appeared. They 
 listened impatiently to what I had to say, then, with- 
 out a word, thrust me into the street and slammed 
 the door in my face. 
 
 It was too much. Inwardly raging, I shook the 
 dust of the city from my feet, and took the most 
 direct route out of it, straight up Third Avenue. I 
 walked till the stars in the east began to pale, and 
 then climbed into a wagon that stood at the curb to 
 sleep. I did not notice that it was a milk-wagon. 
 The sun had not risen yet when the driver came, 
 unceremoniously dragged me out by the feet, and 
 dumped me into the gutter. On I went with 
 my gripsack, straight ahead, until toward noon I 
 reached Fordham College, famished and footsore. 
 I had eaten nothing since the previous day, and had 
 vainly tried to make a bath in the Bronx River do 
 for breakfast. Not yet could I cheat my stomach 
 that way. 
 
 The college gates were open, and I strolled wearily 
 in, without aim or purpose. On a lawn some young 
 men were engaged in athletic exercises, and I stopped 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 53 
 
 to look and admire the beautiful shade-trees and the 
 imposing building. So at least it seems to me at 
 this distance. An old monk in a cowl, whose noble 
 face I sometimes recall in my dreams, came over and 
 asked kindly if I was not hungry. I was in all con- 
 science fearfully hungry, and I said so, though I did 
 not mean to. I had never seen a real live monk 
 before, and my Lutheran training had not exactly 
 inclined me in their favor. I ate of the food set 
 before me, not without qualms of conscience, and 
 with a secret suspicion that I would next be asked 
 to abjure my faith, or at least do homage to the Vir- 
 gin Mary, which I was firmly resolved not to do. 
 But when, the meal finished, I was sent on my way 
 with enough to do me for supper, without the least 
 allusion having been made to my soul, I felt heartily 
 ashamed of myself. I am just as good a Protestant 
 as I ever was. Among my own I am a kind of 
 heretic even, because I cannot put up with the apos- 
 tolic succession ; but I have no quarrel with the 
 excellent charities of the Roman Church, or with 
 the noble spirit that animates them. I learned that 
 lesson at Fordham thirty years ago. 
 
 Up the railroad track I went, and at night hired 
 out to a truck-farmer, with the freedom of his hay- 
 mow for my sleeping quarters. But when I had 
 hoed cucumbers three days in a scorching sun, till 
 my back ached as if it were going to break, and the 
 
54 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 farmer guessed that he would call it square for three 
 shillings, I went farther. A man is not necessarily 
 a philanthropist, it seems, because he tills the soil. 
 I did not hire out again. I did odd jobs to earn my 
 meals, and slept in the fields at night, still turning 
 over in my mind how to get across the sea. An 
 incident of those wanderings comes to mind while 
 I am writing. They were carting in hay, and when 
 night came on, somewhere about Mount Vernon, I 
 gathered an armful of wisps that had fallen from the 
 loads, and made a bed for myself in a wagon-shed 
 by the roadside. In the middle of the night I was 
 awakened by a loud outcry. A fierce light shone 
 in my face. It was the lamp of a carriage that had 
 been driven into the shed. I was lying between the 
 horse's feet unhurt. A gentleman sprang from the 
 carriage, more frightened than I, and bent over me. 
 When he found that I had suffered no injury, he 
 put his hand in his pocket and held out a silver 
 quarter. 
 
 " Go," he said, " and drink it up." 
 
 " Drink it up yourself ! " I shouted angrily. 
 "What do you take me for.?" 
 
 They were rather high heroics, seeing where I 
 was, but he saw nothing to laugh at. He looked 
 earnestly at me for a moment, then held out his 
 hand and shook mine heartily. " I believe you," he 
 said ; " yet you need it, or you would not sleep here. 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 55 
 
 Now will you take it from me ? " And I took the 
 money. 
 
 The next day it rained, and the next day after 
 that, and I footed it back to the city, still on my 
 vain quest. A quarter is not a great capital to sub- 
 sist on in New York when one is not a beggar and 
 has no friends. Two days of it drove me out again 
 to find at least the food to keep me alive ; but in 
 those two days I met the man who, long years after, 
 was to be my honored chief, Charles A. Dana, the 
 editor of the Sun. There had been an item in 
 the Sun about a volunteer regiment being fitted 
 out for France. I went up to the office, and was 
 admitted' to Mr. Dana's presence. I fancy I must 
 have appealed to his sense of the ludicrous, dressed 
 in top-boots and a linen duster much the worse for 
 wear, and demanding to be sent out to fight. He 
 knew nothing about recruiting. Was I French .? 
 No, Danish ; it had been in his paper about the 
 regiment. He smiled a little at my faith, and said 
 editors sometimes did not know about everything 
 that was in their papers. I turned to go, grievously 
 disappointed, but he called me back. 
 
 " Have you," he said, looking searchingly at me, 
 " have you had your breakfast ? " 
 
 No, God knows that I had not; neither that day 
 nor for many days before. That was one of the 
 things I had at last learned to consider among the 
 
56 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 superfluities of an effete civilization. I suppose I 
 had no need of telling it to him, for it was plain to 
 read in my face. He put his hand in his pocket 
 and pulled out a dollar. 
 
 " There," he said, " go and get your breakfast ; 
 and better give up the war." 
 
 Give up the war ! and for a breakfast. I spurned 
 the dollar hotly. 
 
 " I came here to enlist, not to beg money for 
 breakfast," I said, and strode out of the ofHce, my 
 head in the air but my stomach crying out miser- 
 ably in rebellion against my pride. I revenged 
 myself upon, it by leaving my top-boots with the 
 " uncle," who was my only friend and relative here, 
 and filling my stomach upon the proceeds. I had 
 one good dinner anyhow, for when I got through 
 there was only twenty-five cents left of the dollar I 
 borrowed upon my last article of " dress." That I 
 paid for a ticket to Perth Amboy, near which place 
 I found work in Pfeiffer's clay-bank. 
 
 Pfeiffer was a German, but his wife was Irish and 
 so were his hands, all except a giant Norwegian 
 and myself. The third day was Sunday, and was 
 devoted to drinking much beer, which Pfeiffer, 
 with an eye to business, furnished on the premises. 
 When they were drunk, the tribe turned upon the 
 Norwegian, and threw him out. It seems that this 
 was a regular weekly occurrence. Me they fired 
 
I LAND IN NEW YORK 57 
 
 out at the same time, but afterward paid no atten- 
 tion to me. The whole crew of them perched on 
 the Norwegian and belabored him with broomsticks 
 and bale-sticks until they roused the sleeping Ber- 
 serk in him. As I was coming to his relief, I saw 
 the human heap heave and rock. From under it 
 arose the enraged giant, tossed his tormentors aside 
 as if they were so much chaff, battered down the 
 door of the house in which they took refuge, and 
 threw them all, Mrs. Pfeiffer included, through the 
 window. They were not hurt, and within two 
 hours they were drinking more beer together and 
 swearing at one another endearingly. I concluded 
 that I had better go on, though Mr. Pfeiffer regret- 
 ted that he never paid his hands in the middle of 
 the month. It appeared afterward that he objected 
 likewise to paying them at the end of the month, or 
 at the beginning of the next. He owes me two 
 days' wages yet. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 I GO TO WAR AT LAST AND SOW THE SEED OF 
 FUTURE CAMPAIGNS 
 
 At sunset on the second day after my desertion 
 of Pfeiffer I walked across a footbridge into a city 
 with many spires, in one of which a chime of bells 
 rang out a familiar tune. The city was New Bruns- 
 wick. I turned down a side street where two stone 
 churches stood side by side. A gate in the picket 
 fence had been left open, and I went in looking for 
 a place to sleep. Back in the churchyard I found 
 what I sought in the brownstone slab covering the 
 tomb of, I know now, an old pastor of the Dutch 
 Reformed Church, who died full of wisdom and 
 grace. I am afraid that I was not overburdened 
 with either, or I might have gone to bed with a full 
 stomach too, instead of chewing the last of the 
 windfall apples that had been my diet on my two 
 days' trip ; but if he slept as peacefully under the 
 slab as I slept on it, he was doing well. I had for 
 once a dry bed, and brownstone keeps warm long 
 after the sun has set. The night dews and the 
 snakes, and the dogs that kept sniiBng and growl- 
 
 58 
 
I GO TO WAR 
 
 S9 
 
 "The dead were much better company." 
 
 ing half the night in the near distance, had made 
 me tired of sleeping in the fields. The dead were 
 much better company. They minded their own 
 business, and let a fellow alone. 
 
 Before sun-up I was on the tow-path looking for 
 a job. Mules were in demand there, not men. 
 The drift caught me once more, and toward even- 
 ing cast me up at a country town then called Little 
 Washington, now South River. How I got there 
 I do not now remember. My diary from those 
 days says nothing about it. Years after, I went 
 
6o THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 back over that road and accepted a " lift " from 
 a farmer going my way. We passed through a 
 toll-gate, and I wondered how the keeper came to 
 collect uneven money. We were two men and two 
 horses. When I came back the day after, I found 
 out. So many cents, read the weather-beaten sign 
 that swung from the gate, for team and driver, so 
 many for each additional beast. I had gone 
 through as an additional beast. 
 
 A short walk from Little Washington I found 
 work in Pettit's brick-yard at ^22 a month and 
 board. That night, when I turned in after a square 
 meal, in an old wagon I had begged for a bed, I felt 
 like a capitalist. I took to the wagon because one 
 look within the barracks had shown them to be 
 impossible. Whether it was that, or the fact that 
 most of the other hands were Germans, who felt in 
 duty bound to celebrate each victory over the 
 French as it was reported day by day, and so pro- 
 voked me to wrath — from the first we didn't get 
 on. They made a point whenever they came back 
 from their celebrations in the village, of dragging 
 my wagon, with me fast asleep in it, down into the 
 river, where by and by the tide rose and searched 
 me out. Then I had to swim for it. That was of 
 less account. Our costume was not elaborate, — a 
 pair of overalls, a woollen shirt, and a straw hat, that 
 was all, and a wetting was rather welcome than 
 
I GO TO WAR 6l 
 
 otherwise ; but they dubbed me Bismarck, and that 
 was not to be borne. My passionate protest only 
 made them laugh the louder. Yet they were not 
 an ill-natured lot, rather the reverse. Saturday 
 afternoon was our wash-day, when we all sported 
 together in peace and harmony in the river. 
 When we came out, we spread our clothes to dry 
 on the roof of the barracks, while we burrowed 
 each in a hill of white sand, and smoked our pipes 
 far into the night, with only our heads and the 
 hand that held the pipe sticking out. That was for 
 protection against mosquitoes. It must have been 
 a sight, one of those Saturday night confabs, but it 
 was solid comfort after the week's work. 
 
 Bricks are made literally while the sun shines. 
 The day begins with the first glimmer of light in 
 the east, and is not over till the " pits" are worked 
 out. It was my task to cart clay in the afternoon 
 to fill them up again. It was an idle enough kind 
 of job. All I had to do was to walk alongside my 
 horse, a big white beast with no joints at all except 
 where its legs were hinged to the backbone, back 
 it up to the pit, and dump the load. But, walking 
 so in the autumn sun, I fell a-dreaming. I forgot 
 claybank and pit. I was back in the old town — 
 saw her play among the timber. I met her again 
 on the Long Bridge. I held her hands once more 
 in that last meeting — the while I was mechanically 
 
62 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 backing my load up to the pit and making ready 
 to dump it. Day-dreams are out of place in a brick- 
 yard. I forgot to take out the tail-board. To my 
 amazement, I beheld the old horse skating around, 
 making frantic efforts to keep its grip on the soil, 
 then slowly rise before my bewildered gaze, clawing 
 feebly at the air as it went up and over, backwards 
 into the pit, load, cart and all. 
 
 I wish for my own reputation that I could truly 
 say I wept for the poor beast. I am sure I felt for it, 
 but the reproachful look it gave me as it lay there 
 on its back, its four feet pointing skyward, was 
 too much. I sat upon the edge of the pit and 
 shouted with laughter, feeling thoroughly ashamed 
 of my levity. Mr. Pettit himself checked it, run- 
 ning in with his boys and demanding to know what 
 I was doing. They had seen the accident from the 
 office, and at once set about getting the horse out. 
 That was no easy matter. It was not hurt at all, 
 but it had fallen so as to bend one of the shafts of 
 the truck like a bow. It had to be sawed in two 
 to get the horse out. When that was done, the 
 heavy ash stick, rebounding suddenly, struck one 
 of the boys, who stood by, a blow on the head that 
 laid him out senseless beside the cart. 
 
 It was no time for laughter then. We ran for 
 water and restoratives, and brought him to, white 
 and weak. The horse by that time had been lifted 
 
I GO TO WAR 63 
 
 to his feet and stood trembling in every limb, ready 
 to drop. It was a sobered driver that climbed out 
 of the pit at the tail end of the procession which 
 bore young Pettit home. I spent a miserable hour 
 hanging around the door of the house waiting for 
 news of him. In the end his father came out to 
 comfort me with the assurance that he would be 
 all right. I was not even discharged, though I 
 was deposed from the wagon to the command of 
 a truck of which I was myself the horse. I " ran 
 out" brick from the pit after that in the morning. 
 
 More than twenty years after, addressing the 
 students of Rutgers College, I told them of my 
 experience in the brick-yard which was so near 
 them. At the end of my address a gentleman 
 came up to me and said, with a twinkle in his eye : 
 
 " So that was you, was it ? My name is Pettit, 
 and I work the brick-yard now. I helped my 
 father get that horse out of the pit, and I have 
 cause to remember that knock on the head." He 
 made me promise sometime to tell him what hap- 
 pened to me since, and if he will attend now he 
 will have it all. 
 
 I had been six weeks in the brick-yard when one 
 day I heard of a company of real volunteers that 
 was ready to sail for France, and forthwith the war 
 fever seized me again. That night I set out for 
 Little Washington, and the next morning's steamer 
 
64 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 bore me past the brick-yard, where the German 
 hands dropped their barrows and cheered me on 
 with a howl of laughter that was yet not all deri- 
 sion. I had kept my end up with them and they 
 knew it. They had lately let my sleeping-car alone 
 in the old barn. Their shouts rang in my ears, 
 nevertheless, when I reached New York and found 
 that the volunteers were gone, and that I was once 
 more too late. I fell back on the French Consul 
 then, but was treated very cavalierly there. I sup- 
 pose I became a nuisance, for when I called the 
 twelfth or twentieth time at the office in Bowling 
 Green, he waxed wroth with sudden vehemence 
 and tried to put me out. 
 
 Then ensued the only fight of the war in which 
 I was destined to have a part, and that on the 
 wrong side. My gorge rose at these continual in- 
 sults. I grabbed the French Consul by the nose, and 
 in a moment we were rolling down the oval stairs 
 together, clawing and fighting for all we were worth. 
 I know it was inexcusable, but consider the provoca- 
 tion ; after all I had sacrificed to serve his people, 
 to be put out the second time like a beggar and a 
 tramp ! I had this one chance of getting even, 
 and that I took it was only human. The racket we 
 made on the stairs roused the whole house. All 
 the clerks ran out and threw themselves upon me. 
 They tore me away from the sacred person of the 
 
I GO TO WAR 65 
 
 Consul and thrust me out into the street bleedins 
 and with a swollen eye to rage there, comforted 
 only by the assurance that without a doubt both 
 his were black. I am a little ashamed — not very 
 much — of the fact that it comforts me even now 
 to think of it. He really did me a favor, that 
 Consul ; but he was no good. He certainly was 
 not. 
 
 It is to be recorded to the credit of my reso- 
 lution, if not of my common sense, that even after 
 that I made two attempts to get over to France. 
 The one was with the captain of a French man-of- 
 war that lay in the harbor. He would not listen 
 to me at- all. The other, and the last, was more 
 successful. I actually got a job as stoker on a 
 French steamer that was to sail for Havre that day 
 in an hour. I ran all the way down to Battery 
 Place, where I had my valise in a boarding-house, 
 and all the way back, arriving at the pier breath- 
 less, in time to see my steamer swing out in the 
 stream beyond my reach. It was the last straw. 
 I sat on the stringpiece and wept with mortifica- 
 tion. When I arose and went my way, the war 
 was over, as far as I was concerned. It was that 
 in fact, as it speedily appeared. The country which 
 to-day, after thirty years of trial and bereavement, 
 is still capable of the Dreyfus infamy, was not fit 
 to hold what was its own. I am glad now that I 
 
66 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 did not go, though I cannot honestly say that I 
 deserve any credit for it. 
 
 All my money was gone, and an effort I made 
 to join a railroad gang in the Spuyten Duyvil cut 
 came to nothing. Again I reenforced my credit 
 with my revolver and the everlasting top-boots, but 
 the two or three dollars they brought at the pawn- 
 shop were soon gone, and once more I was turned 
 out in the street. It was now late in the fall. The 
 brick-making season was over. The city was full 
 of idle men. My last hope, a promise of employ- 
 ment in a human-hair factory, failed, and, homeless 
 and penniless, I joined the great army of tramps, 
 wandering about the streets in the daytime with 
 the one aim of somehow stilling the hunger that 
 gnawed at my vitals, and fighting at night with 
 vagrant curs or outcasts as miserable as myself for 
 the protection of some sheltering ash-bin or door- 
 way. I was too proud in all my misery to beg. I 
 do not believe I ever did. But I remember well 
 a basement window at the down-town Delmonico's, 
 the silent appearance of my ravenous face at which, 
 at a certain hour in the evening, always evoked a 
 generous supply of meat-bones and rolls from a 
 white-capped cook who spoke French. That was 
 the saving clause. I accepted his rolls as instal- 
 ments of the debt his country owed me, or ought 
 to owe me, for my unavailing efforts in its behalf. 
 
I GO TO WAR 
 
 67 
 
 It was under such auspices that I made the ac- 
 quaintance of Mulberry Bend, the Five Points, and 
 the rest of the slum, with which there was in the 
 years to come to be a 
 
 reckoning. For half 
 a lifetime afterward 
 they were my haunts 
 by day and by 
 night, as a police 
 reporter, and I can 
 fairly lay claim, it 
 seems to me, to 
 a personal knowl- 
 edge of the evil I 
 attacked. I speak 
 of this because, in 
 a batch of reviews 
 of " A Ten Years' 
 War " which came 
 yesterday from my 
 publishers to me 
 there is one which 
 lays it all to " maudlin 
 sensitiveness " on my part. 
 " The slum," says this writer, " is not at all so 
 unspeakably vile," and measures for relief based 
 on my arraignment " must be necessarily abortive." 
 Every once in a while I am asked why I became 
 
 THDJ-iAi PaSARTXi. 
 
 Lunching at Delmonico's. 
 
68 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 a newspaper man. For one thing, because there 
 were writers of such trash, who, themselves com- 
 fortably lodged, have not red blood enough in their 
 veins to feel for those to whom everything is de- 
 nied, and not sense enough to make out the facts 
 when they see them, or they would not call play- 
 grounds, schoolhouses, and better tenements " abor- 
 tive measures." Some one had to tell the facts ; 
 that is one reason why I became a reporter. And 
 I am going to stay one until the last of that ilk has 
 ceased to discourage men from trying to help their 
 fellows by the shortest cut they can find, whether it 
 fits in a theory or not. I don't care two pins for all 
 the social theories that were ever made unless they 
 help to make better men and women by bettering 
 their lot. I have had cranks of that order, who 
 rated as sensible beings in the ordinary affairs of 
 life, tell me that I was doing harm rather than good 
 by helping improve the lot of the poor ; it delayed 
 the final day of justice we were waiting for. Not I. 
 I don't propose to wait an hour for it, if I can help 
 bring it on; and I know I can. 
 
 There ! I don't believe I have read fifteen re- 
 views of any of my books. Life is too short ; but I 
 am glad I did not miss that one. Those are the 
 fellows for whom Roosevelt is not a good enough 
 reformer ; who chill the enthusiasm of mankind with 
 a deadly chill, and miscall it method — science. 
 
I GO TO WAR 69 
 
 The science of how not to do a thing — yes ! 
 They make me tired. 
 
 There was until last winter a doorway in Chatham 
 Square, that of the old Barnum clothing store, 
 which I could never pass without recalling those 
 nights of hopeless misery with the policeman's 
 periodic " Get up there ! move on ! " reenforced by 
 a prod of his club or the toe of his boot. I slept 
 there, or tried to when crowded out of the tenements 
 in the Bend by their utter nastiness. Cold and wet 
 weather had set in, and a linen duster was all that 
 covered my back. There was a woollen blanket in 
 my trunk which I had from home — the one, my 
 mother had told me, in which I was wrapped when 
 I was born; but the trunk was in the "hotel" as 
 security for money I owed for board, and I asked 
 for it in vain. I was now too shabby to get work, 
 even if there had been any to get. I had letters 
 still to friends of my family in New York who might 
 have helped me, but hunger and want had not con- 
 quered my pride. I would come to them, if at all, 
 as their equal, and, lest I fall into temptation, I 
 destroyed the letters. So, having burned my bridges 
 behind me, I was finally and utterly alone in the 
 city, with the winter approaching and every shiver- 
 ing night in the streets reminding me that a time 
 was rapidly coming when such a life as I led could 
 no longer be endured. 
 
•JO THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Not in a thousand years would I be likely to for- 
 get the night when it came. It had rained all day, 
 a cold October storm, and night found me, with the 
 chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, 
 soaked through and through, with no chance for a 
 supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bul- 
 wark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of 
 the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it 
 seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between 
 the " castle " with its refined ways, between her in 
 her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed 
 with the cold that was slowly stealing away my 
 senses with my courage. There was warmth and 
 
 cheer where she was. Here An overpowering 
 
 sense of desolation came upon me. I hitched a 
 little nearer the edge. What if — .? Would they 
 miss me much or long at home if no word came 
 from me } Perhaps they might never hear. What 
 was the use of keeping it up any longer with, God 
 help us, everything against and nothing to back a 
 lonely lad .i^ 
 
 And even then the help came. A wet and shiver- 
 ing body was pressed against mine, and I felt rather 
 than heard a piteous whine in my ear. It was my 
 companion in misery, a little outcast black-and-tan, 
 afflicted with fits, that had shared the shelter of a 
 friendly doorway with me one cold night and had 
 clung to me ever since with a loyal affection that 
 
I GO TO WAR 71 
 
 was the one bright spot in my hard life. As my 
 hand stole mechanically down to caress it, it crept 
 upon my knees and licked my face, as if it meant to 
 tell me that there was one who understood ; that I 
 was not alone. And the love of the faithful little 
 beast thawed the icicles in my heart. I picked it 
 up in my arms and fled from the tempter ; fled to 
 where there were lights and men moving, if they 
 cared less for me than I for them — anywhere so 
 that I saw and heard the river no more. 
 
 In the midnight hour we walked into the Church 
 Street police station and asked for lodging. The 
 rain was still pouring in torrents. The sergeant 
 spied the dog under my tattered coat and gruffly 
 told me to put it out, if I wanted to sleep there. I 
 pleaded for it in vain. There was no choice. To 
 stay in the street was to perish. So I left my dog 
 out on the stoop, where it curled up to wait for me. 
 Poor httle friend! It was its last watch. The 
 lodging-room was jammed with a foul and stewing 
 crowd of tramps. A loud-mouthed German was 
 holding forth about the war in Europe, and crowding 
 me on my plank. Cold and hunger had not sufficed 
 to put out the patriotic spark within me. It was 
 promptly fanned into flame, and I told him what I 
 thought of him and his crew. Some Irishmen 
 cheered and fomented trouble, and the doorman 
 came in threatening to lock us all up. I smothered 
 
72 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 my disgust at the place as well as I could, and slept, 
 wearied nearly to death. 
 
 In the middle of the night I awoke with a feeling 
 that something was wrong. Instinctively I felt for 
 the little gold locket I wore under my shirt, with a 
 part of the precious curl in it that was my last link 
 with home. It was gone. I had felt it there the 
 last thing before I fell asleep. One of the tramp 
 lodgers had cut the string and stolen it. With angry 
 tears I went up and complained to the sergeant that 
 I had been robbed. He scowled at me over the 
 blotter, called me a thief, and said that he had a 
 good mind to lock me up. How should I, a tramp 
 boy, have come by a gold locket ? He had heard, 
 he added, that I had said in the lodging-room that 
 I wished the French would win, and he would only 
 be giving me what I deserved if he sent me to the 
 Island. I heard and understood. He was himself 
 a German. All my sufferings rose up before me, 
 all the bitterness of my soul poured itself out upon 
 him. I do not know what I said. I remember that 
 he told the doorman to put me out. And he seized 
 me and threw me out of the door, coming after to 
 kick me down the stoop. 
 
 My dog had been waiting, never taking its eyes 
 off the door, until I should come out. When it saw 
 me in the grasp of the doorman, it fell upon him at 
 once, fastening its teeth in his leg. He let go of me 
 
I GO TO WAR 
 
 73 
 
 with a yell of pain, seized the poor little beast by the 
 legs, and beat its brains out against the stone steps. 
 
 The Fight on the PoUce Station Steps. 
 
 At the sight a blind rage seized me. Raving 
 like a madman, I stormed the police station with 
 paving-stones from the gutter. The fury of my on- 
 set frightened even the sergeant, who saw, perhaps, 
 that he had gone too far, and he called two police- 
 
74 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 men to disarm and conduct me out of the precinct 
 anywhere so that he got rid of me. They marched 
 me to the nearest ferry and turned me loose. The 
 ferry-master hahed me. I had no money, but I gave 
 him a silk handkerchief, the last thing about me that 
 had any value, and for that he let me cross to Jersey 
 City. I shook the dust of New York from my feet, 
 vowing that I would never return, and, setting my 
 face toward the west, marched straight oftt the first 
 railroad track I came to. 
 
 And now, right here, begins the part of my story 
 that is my only excuse for writing down these facts, 
 though it will not appear for a while yet. The out- 
 rage of that night became, in the providence of God, 
 the means of putting an end to one of the foulest 
 abuses that ever disgraced a Christian city, and 
 a mainspring in the battle with the slum as far as 
 my share in it is concerned. My dog did not die 
 unavenged. 
 
 I walked all day, following the track, and in the 
 afternoon crossed the long trestlework of the Jersey 
 Central Railroad over Newark Bay, with my face 
 set toward Philadelphia. I had friends there, distant 
 relatives, and had at last made up my mind to go to 
 them and ask them to start me afresh. On the 
 road which I had chosen for myself I had come to 
 the jumping-o£f place. Before night I found com- 
 pany in other tramps who had been over the road 
 
I GO TO WAR 75 
 
 before and knew just what towns to go around and 
 which to walk through boldly. Rahway, if I re- 
 member rightly, was one of those to be severely 
 shunned. I discovered presently that I was on the 
 great tramps' highway, with the column moving 
 south on its autumn hegira to warmer climes. I 
 cannot say I fancied the company. Tramps never 
 had any atti-action for me, as a sociological problem 
 or otherwise. I was compelled, more than once, to 
 be of and with them, but I shook their company as 
 quickly as I could. As for the " problem " they are 
 supposed to represent, I think the workhouse and 
 the police are quite competent to deal with that, 
 provided it is not a Tammany police. It does not 
 differ appreciably from the problem of human lazi- 
 ness in any other shape or age. We got some light 
 on that, which ought to convince anybody, when 
 under Mayor Strong's administration we tried to 
 deal intelligently with vagrancy. One-half of the 
 homeless applicants for night shelter were fat, 
 well-nourished young loafers who wouldn't work. 
 That is not my statement, but the report of the 
 doctor who saw them stripped, taking their bath. 
 The bath and the investigation presently decreased 
 their numbers, until in a week scarcely anything 
 was left of the " problem " that had bothered us so. 
 
 Four days I was on the way to Philadelphia, liv- 
 ing on apples and an occasional meal earned by 
 
76 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 doing odd jobs. At night I slept in lonely barns 
 that nearly always had a board ripped out — the 
 tramps' door. I tried to avoid the gang, but I was 
 not always successful. I remember still with a 
 shudder an instance of that kind. I was burrowing 
 in a haymow, thinking myself alone. In the night 
 a big storm came up. The thunder shook the old 
 barn, and I sat up wondering if it would be blown 
 away. A fierce lightning-flash filled it with a 
 ghostly light, and showed me within arm's length a 
 white and scared face with eyes starting from their 
 sockets at the sight of me. The next moment all 
 was black darkness again. My heart stood still for 
 what seemed the longest moment of my life. Then 
 there came out of the darkness a quaking voice 
 asking, " Is anybody there ? " For once I was glad 
 to have a live tramp about. I really thought it was 
 a ghost. 
 
 The last few miles to Camden I rode in a cattle- 
 car, arriving there at night, much the worse for the 
 wear of it on my linen duster. In the freight-yard 
 I was picked up by a good-hearted police captain 
 who took me to his station, made me tell him my 
 story, and gave me a bed in an unused cell, the door 
 of which he took the precaution to lock on the out- 
 side. But I did not mind. Rather that a hundred 
 times than the pig-sty in the New York station- 
 house. In the morning he gave me breakfast and 
 
I GO TO WAR "j-j 
 
 money to get my boots blacked and to pay my fare 
 across the Delaware. And so my homeless wander- 
 ings came, for the time being, to an end. For in 
 Philadelphia I found in the Danish Consul, 
 Ferdinand Myhlertz, and his dear wife, friends 
 indeed as in need. The City of Brotherly Love 
 found heart and time to welcome the wanderer, 
 though at the time it was torn up by the hottest 
 kind of fight over the question whether or not to 
 disfigure the beautiful square at Broad and Market 
 streets by putting the new municipal building 
 there. 
 
 When, after two weeks' rest with my friends, 
 they sent me on my way to an old schoolmate in 
 Jamestown, N.Y., clothed and in my right mind, I 
 was none the worse for my first lesson in swimming 
 against the current, and quite sure that next time I 
 should be able to breast it. Hope springs eternal 
 at twenty-one. I had many a weary stretch ahead 
 before I was to make port. But with youth and 
 courage as the equipment, one should win almost 
 any fight. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WORKING AND WANDERING 
 
 Winter came quickly up by the northern lakes, 
 but it had no terror for me. For once I had shelter 
 and enough to eat. It found me felling trees on 
 Swede Hill, where a considerable settlement of 
 Scandinavians was growing up. I had tried 
 my hand at making cradles in a furniture-shop, but 
 at two dollars and forty cents per dozen there was 
 not much profit in it. So I took to the woods and 
 learned to swing an axe in the American fashion 
 that had charmed me so at Brady's Bend. I liked 
 it much better, anyway, than being in the house 
 winter and summer. It is well that we are 
 fashioned that way, some for indoors and some for 
 outdoors, for so the work of the world is all done ; 
 but it has always seemed to me that the indoor folk 
 take too big a share of credit to themselves, as 
 though there were special virtue in that, though I 
 think that the reverse is the case. At least it seems 
 more natural to want to be out in the open where 
 the sun shines and the winds blow. When I was 
 not chopping wood I was helping with the ice har- 
 
 78 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 
 
 79 
 
 vest on the lake or repairing the steamer that ran 
 in summer between Jamestown and Mayville. My 
 home was in Dexterville, a mile or so out of town, 
 where there lived a Danish family, the Romers, at 
 whose home I was made welcome. The friendship 
 which grew up between us has endured through life 
 and been to me a treasure. Gentler and truer 
 hearts than those of Nicholas and John Romer 
 there are not many. 
 
 I shared my room with another countryman, 
 Anthony Ronne, a young axe-maker, who, like my- 
 self, was in hard luck. The axe-factory had burned 
 down, and, with no work in sight, the outlook for 
 him was not exactly bright. He had not my way 
 of laughing it off, but was rather disposed to see the 
 serious side of it. Probably that was the reason we 
 took to each other; the balance was restored so. 
 Maybe he sobered me down somewhat. If any one 
 assumes that in my role of unhappy lover I went 
 about glooming and glowering on mankind, he 
 makes a big mistake. Besides, I had not the least 
 notion of accepting that role as permanent. I was 
 out to twist the wheel of fortune my way when I 
 could get my hands upon it. I never doubted that 
 I should do that sooner or later, if only I kept doing 
 things. That Elizabeth should ever marry anybody 
 but me was preposterously impossible, no matter 
 what she or anybody said. 
 
8o THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Was this madness? They half thought so at 
 home when they caught a glimpse of it in my 
 letters. Not at all. It was conviction — the con- 
 viction that shapes events and the world to its ends. 
 I know what I am talking about. If any one 
 doubts it, and thinks his a worse case than mine, 
 let him try my plan. If he cannot muster up cour- 
 age to do it, it is the best proof in the world that 
 she was right in refusing him. 
 
 To return to my chum ; he, on his part, rose to 
 the height even of "going out," but not with me. 
 There was a physical obstacle to that. We had but 
 one coat between us, a turned black kersey, worn 
 very smooth and shiny also on the wrong side, 
 which I had bought of a second-hand dealer in 
 Philadelphia for a dollar. It was our full-dress, and 
 we took turns arraying ourselves in it for the 
 Dexterville weekly parties. These gatherings inter- 
 ested me chiefly as outbreaks of the peculiar Ameri- 
 can humor that was very taking to me, in and out 
 of the newspapers. Dancing being tabooed as 
 immoral and contaminating, the young people had 
 recourse to particularly energetic kissing games, 
 which more than made up for their deprivation on 
 the other score. It was all very harmless and very 
 funny, and the winter wore away pleasantly enough 
 in spite of hard luck and hard work when there 
 was any 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 8 1 
 
 With the early thaw came change. My friends 
 moved away to Buffalo, and I was left for two 
 months the sole occupant of the Romer homestead. 
 My last job gave out about that time, and a wheel- 
 barrow express which I established between Dexter- 
 ville and the steamboat landing on the lake refused 
 to prosper. The idea was good enough, but I was 
 ahead of my time : travel on the lake had not yet 
 begun. With my field thus narrowed down, I fell 
 back on my gun and some old rat-traps I found in 
 the woodshed. I became a hunter and trapper. 
 Right below me was the glen through which the 
 creek ran on its way to the sawmills and furniture- 
 shops of Jamestown. It was full of musk-rats that 
 burrowed in its banks between the roots of dead 
 hemlocks and pines. There I set my traps and 
 baited them with carrots and turnips. The man- 
 ner of it was simple enough. I set the trap on the 
 bottom of the creek and hung the bait on a stick 
 projecting from the bank over it, so that to get at 
 it the rat had to step on the trap. I caught lots of 
 them. Their skins brought twenty cents apiece in 
 the town, so that I was really quite independent. 
 I made often as much as a dollar overnight with 
 my traps, and then had the whole day to myself 
 in the hills, where I waylaid many a fat rabbit or 
 squirrel and an occasional bird. 
 
 The one thing that marred my enjoyment of this 
 
82 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 life of freedom was my vain struggle to master the 
 art of cookery in its elements. To properly get the 
 hang of that, and of housekeeping in general, two 
 heads are needed, as I have found out since — one of 
 them with curls and long eyelashes. Then it is fine 
 
 .-^^^^■■Bt" 
 
 
 
 #9-J]kX3^g^ 
 
 
 
 ^^;S^ '""^"'^H 
 
 
 ,i "^^ 
 
 ^^^ '^ -'-"ii^SV. '■-.■-■ . * 'f4.^^^^B 
 
 
 •^St -fc-T.j^Bw*'TiS 
 
 
 
 piiiii 
 
 
 
 
 
 *- 
 
 V 
 
 
 -■ * - ' ^ ',-." 
 
 ■ ;•:>'' 
 
 ^^^Kfn^tTr^r^' ' 
 
 
 "There I set my traps." 
 
 fun ; but it is not good for man to tackle that job 
 alone. Goodness knows I tried hard enough. I re- 
 member the first omelet I made. I was bound to 
 get it good. So I made a muster-roll of all the good 
 things Mrs. Romer had left in the house, and put 
 them all in. Eggs and strawberry jam and raisins 
 and apple-sauce, and some sliced bacon — the way 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 83 
 
 I had seen mother do with "egg pancakes." But 
 though I seasoned it Hberally with baking-powder 
 to make it rise, it did not rise. It was dreadfully 
 heavy and discouraging, and not even the straw- 
 berry jam had power to redeem it. To tell the 
 truth, it was not a good omelet. It was hardly fit 
 to eat. The jam came out to better advantage in 
 the sago I boiled, but there was too much of it. It 
 was only a fruit-jar full, but I never saw anything 
 swell so. It boiled out of the pot and into another 
 and another, while I kept pouring on water until 
 nearly every jar in the house was full of sago that 
 stood around until moss grew on it with age. 
 There is much contrariness in cooking. When I 
 tapped my maples with the rest — there were two 
 big trees in front of the house — and tried to make 
 sugar, I was prepared to see the sap boil away ; but 
 when I had labored a whole day and burned half a 
 cord of wood, and had for my trouble half a tea- 
 cupful of sugar, which made me sick into the 
 bargain, I concluded that that game was not worth 
 the candle, and gave up my plans of becoming a 
 sugar-planter on a larger scale. 
 
 It was at this time that I made my first appear- 
 ance on the lecture platform. There was a Scan- 
 dinavian society in Jamestown, composed chiefly of 
 workingmen whose fight with life had left them 
 little enough time for schooling. They were anx- 
 
84 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ious to learn, however, and as I was set on teaching 
 where I saw the chance, the thing came of itself. 
 I had been mightily interested in the Frenchman 
 Figuier's account of the formation and development 
 of the earth, and took that for my topic. Twice a 
 week, when I had set my traps in the glen, I went 
 to town and talked astronomy and geology to inter- 
 ested audiences that gazed terror stricken at the 
 loathsome saurians and the damnable pterodactyl 
 which I sketched on the blackboard. Well they 
 might. I spared them no gruesome detail, and I 
 never could draw, anyhow. However, I rescued 
 them from those beasts in season, and together we 
 hauled the earth through age-long showers of molten 
 metal into the sunlight of our day. I sometimes 
 carried home as much as two or three dollars, after 
 paying for gas and hall, with the tickets ten cents 
 apiece, and I saw wealth and fame ahead of me, 
 when sudden wreck came to my hopes and my 
 career as a lecturer. 
 
 It was all because, having got the earth properly 
 constructed and set up, as it were, I undertook to 
 explain about latitude and longitude. Figures came 
 in there, and I was never strong at mathematics. 
 My education in that branch had run into a snag 
 about the middle of the little multiplication table. 
 A boy from the "plebs" school challenged me to 
 fight, as I was making my way to recitation, trying 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 85 
 
 to learn the table by heart. I broke off in the 
 middle of the sixes to wallop him, and never got 
 any farther. The class went on that day without 
 me, and I never overtook it. I made but little 
 effort. In the Latin School, which rather prided 
 itself upon being free from the commercial taint, 
 mathematics was held to be in the nature of an 
 intrusion, and it was a sort of good mark for a boy 
 that he did not take to it, if at the same time he 
 showed aptitude for language. So I was left to 
 deplore with Marjorie Fleming to the end of my 
 days the inherent viciousness of sevens and eights, 
 as "more than human nature can endure." It is 
 one of the ironies of life that I should have had to 
 take up work into Vi^hich the study of statistics 
 enters largely. But the powers that set me the 
 task provided a fitter back than mine for that 
 burden. As I explained years ago in the preface 
 to " How the Other Half Lives," the patient friend- 
 ship of Dr. Roger S. Tracy, the learned statistician 
 of the Health Department, has smoothed the rebel- 
 lious kinks out of death-rates and population statis- 
 tics, as of so many other knotty problems which we 
 have worked out together. 
 
 But I am getting out of my longitude, as I did 
 then. When I had groped about long enough try- 
 ing to make my audience understand what I only 
 half understood myself, an old sea-captain arose in 
 
86 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 his place and said that any man who would make 
 a mess of so simple a thing as latitude and longi- 
 tude evidently knew nothing at all. It happened 
 to be the one thing he knew about. Popular favor 
 is a fickle thing. The audience that had but now 
 been applauding my efforts to organize the earth 
 took his word for it without waiting for an expla- 
 nation and went out in a body, scouting even the 
 ichthyosaurus as a prehistoric fake. 
 
 I made a valiant effort to stem the tide, but came 
 to worse grief than before. My only listener was a 
 Swedish blacksmith who had attended the creation 
 and development of the earth from the beginning 
 with unshaken faith, though he was a member of 
 the Lutheran church, with the pastor and deacons 
 of which I had waged a bitter newspaper war over 
 the " sin " of dancing. But when I said, on the 
 authority of Figuier, that an English man-of-war 
 had once during an earthquake been thrown into 
 the city of Callao and through the roof of a church, 
 between the walls of which it remained standing 
 upright on its keel, he got up and went too. He 
 circulated the story in town with various embellish- 
 ments. The deacons aforesaid seized upon it as 
 welcome ammunition, construing it into an insult to 
 the church, and there was an end to my lecturing. 
 
 The warm spring weather, together with these 
 disappointments, bred in me the desire to roam. 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 8j 
 
 I packed away my traps and started for Buffalo 
 with my grip, walking along the lake. It set ir. 
 with a drizzling rain, and I was soon wet to the 
 skin. Where the Chautauqua summer school 
 grounds are now I surprised a flock of wild ducks 
 near the shore, and was lucky enough to wound 
 one with my revolver. But the wind carried it 
 out of my reach, and I trudged on supperless, 
 through Mayville, where the lights were beginning 
 to shine in the windows. Not one of them was 
 for me. All my money had gone to pay back debts 
 to my Dexterville landlady. The Danes had a 
 good name in Jamestown, and we were all very 
 jealous of it. We would have starved, every one 
 of us, rather than leave unpaid debts behind. As 
 Mrs. Ben Wah many years after put it to me, " it 
 is no disgrace to be poor, but it is sometimes very 
 inconvenient." I found it so when, worn out with 
 walking, I crawled into an abandoned barn half- 
 way to Westfield and dug down in the hay, wet 
 through and hungry as a bear. It stormed and 
 rained all night, and a rat or a squirrel fell from the 
 roof on my face. It felt like a big sprawling hand, 
 and woke me up in a great fright. 
 
 The sun was shining upon a peaceful Sabbath 
 when I crawled out of my hole and saw to my dis- 
 may that I had been sleeping in a pile of old hay 
 seed that had worked through and through my wet 
 
88 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 clothes until I was a sight. An hour's patient 
 plucking and a bath in a near-by pond restored me 
 to something like human shape, and I held ray 
 entry into Westfield. The people were going to 
 church in their holiday clothes, and eyed the un- 
 couth stranger askance. I travelled the whole 
 length of the town thinking what to do next. My 
 stomach decided for me. There was a house 
 standing in a pretty garden with two little cast- 
 iron negro boys for hitching-posts at the steps. 
 I rang the bell, and to an old lady who opened the 
 door 1 offered to chop wood, fetch water, or do 
 anything there was to do in exchange for break- 
 fast. She went in and brought out her husband, 
 who looked me over and said that if I was willins: 
 to do his chores I need go no farther. I was tired 
 and famished, and the place was so restful that 1 
 said yes at once. In ten minutes I was eating my 
 breakfast in the kitchen, duly installed as Dr. 
 Spencer's hired man. 
 
 I think of the month I spent in the doctor's house 
 with mingled feelings of exasperation and amuse- 
 ment. If I had not learned to milk a cow there, 
 probably Octavia Ely would never have come into 
 my life, horrid nightmare that she was. Octavia 
 Ely was a Jersey cow with a brass tag in her ear, 
 whose attacks upon the domestic peace of my house 
 in after years even now fill me with rage. In the 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 89 
 
 twelve months of her sojourn with us she had 
 fifteen different kinds of disease, every one of 
 which advertised itself by the stopping of her milk. 
 When she had none, she never once s;ave down the 
 milk without grudging it. With three of us to 
 hold her legs and tail lest she step in the pail or 
 switch our ears, she would reach back and eat the 
 vest off my back where I sat milking her. But 
 she does not belong in this story, thank goodness ! 
 If she had never belonged to me or mine, I should 
 be a better man to-day; she provoked me so. 
 However, I cannot reasonably lay the blame for 
 her on the doctor. His cow was friendly enough. 
 It was Sport, the old dog, that made the heaviest 
 and at the same time a most ludicrous item in my 
 duties as hired man. Long past the age of sport 
 of any kind, he spent his decadent years in a state 
 of abject fear of thunder and lightning. If only 
 a cloud darkened the sun. Sport kept up a ceaseless 
 pilgrimage between his corner and the kitchen 
 door to observe the sky, sighing most grievously 
 at the outlook. At the first distant rumble — this 
 was in the month of May, when it thundered almost 
 every day — he became perfectly rigid with terror. 
 It was my duty then to carry him down into the 
 cellar and shut him in the wood-box, where he 
 was out^ of the way of it all. Poor Sport laid his 
 head against my shoulder and wept great tears that 
 
90 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 wrung peals of laughter from me and from the boys 
 who always hung around to see the show. 
 
 One of these was just beginning the struggle 
 with his Homer, which I knew by heart almost, 
 and it may have been the discovery that I was 
 able to steer him through it between chores, as 
 well as to teach him some tricks of fencing, that 
 helped make the doctor anxious that I should 
 promise to stay with him always. He would make 
 me rich, he said. But other ambitions than to milk 
 cows and plant garden truck were stirring in me. 
 To be rich was never among them. I had begun 
 to write essays for the magazines, choosing for my 
 topic, for want of any other, the maltreatment of 
 Denmark by Prussia, which rankled fresh in my 
 memory, and the duty of all Scandinavians to rise 
 up and avenge it. The Scandinavians would not 
 listen when I wrote in Danish, and my English 
 outpourings never reached the publishers. I dis- 
 covered that I lacked words — they didn't pour; 
 at which, in general discontentment with myself 
 and all things, I pulled up stakes and went to 
 Buffalo. Only, this time I rode in a railway train, 
 with money in my pocket. 
 
 For all that, Buffalo received me with no more 
 circumstance than it had done when I came there 
 penniless, on the way to the war, the year before. 
 I piled boards in a lumber-yard until I picked a 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING gr 
 
 quarrel with a tyrant foreman on behalf of a lot of 
 green Germans whom he maltreated most shame- 
 fully. Then I was put out. A cabinet-maker in 
 the " Beehive," a factory building out in Niagara 
 Street, hired me next to make bedsteads, and took 
 me to board with him. In the top story of the 
 factory we fitted up a bedroom that was just large 
 enough for one sitting and two, standing, so long 
 as the door was not opened ; then one of the two 
 had to get out. It mattered little, for the only 
 visitor I had was a half-elderly countryman of mine 
 whom they had worked so hard in his childhood 
 that he had never had a chance to go to school. 
 We two labored together by my little lamp, and 
 it was great fun to see him who had never known 
 how to read and write his own Danish make long 
 strides in the strange tongue he spoke so singularly 
 well. When we were both tired out, we would 
 climb up on the roof and lie there and look out 
 over the lake and the city where the myriad lights 
 were shining, and talk of the old home and old 
 times. 
 
 Sometimes the new would crowd them out in 
 spite of all. I remember that Fourth of July when 
 the salute from Fort Porter woke me up at sunrise 
 and fired me with sudden patriotic ardor. I jumped 
 out of bed and grabbed my revolver. There was a 
 pile of packing-boxes in the yard below, and, know 
 
92 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ing that there was no one around whom I could 
 hurt, I made it my target and fired away all my 
 ammunition at it. It made a fine racket, and I was 
 happy. A couple of days later, when I was down 
 in the yard, it occurred to me to look at the boxes to 
 ascertain what kind of a score I had made. A very 
 good one. All the bullets had hit. The boxes 
 looked like so many sieves. Incidentally I found 
 out that they were not empty, as I had supposed, 
 but filled with glass fruit-jars. 
 
 I had eventually to give that job up also, because 
 my boss was " bad pay." He was pretty much all 
 bad, I guess. I do think his house was the most 
 disorderly one I have ever come across. Seven ill- 
 favored children clamored about the table, fighting 
 with their even more ill-favored mother. She used 
 to single out the one she wished to address by 
 slamming a handful of string-beans, or whatever 
 greens might be at hand, across the table at him. 
 The youngster would fire it back, and so they were 
 en rapport with each other. The father was seldom 
 sober at meals. When he "felt funny," he would 
 stealthily pour a glass of water down the nearest 
 child's back and then sit and chuckle over the 
 havoc he had wrought. There followed a long 
 and woful wail and an instant explosion from the 
 mother in this wise. I can hear her now. It was 
 always the same : — 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 93 
 
 " Gott-himmel-donnerwetter-noch-emal-ich-will-de- 
 mal-hole-du-spitzbub-eselskerl -wart'- nur-ich - schlag- 
 de-noch-todt-potz-sacrement ! " 
 
 Whereupon, from sheer exhaustion all round, there 
 was peace for at least five minutes. 
 
 Which reminds me of meeting Adler, my chum 
 from Brady's Bend, in Buffalo. He had come up 
 to get a $1500 place, as he informed me. That 
 would about satisfy him. That such jobs were 
 waiting by the score for an educated German in 
 this barbarous land he never doubted for a moment. 
 In the end he went to work in a rolling-mill at a 
 dollar a day. Adler was ever a stickler for etiquette. 
 In Brady's Bend we had very little of it. At meal- 
 times a flock of chickens used to come into the 
 summer kitchen where we ate, and forage around, 
 to Adler's great disgust. One day they deliberately 
 flew up on the table, and fell to fighting with the 
 boarders for the food. A big Shanghai rooster trod 
 in the butter and tracked it over the table. At the 
 sight Adler's rage knew no bounds. Seizing a half- 
 loaf of bread, he aimed it at the rooster and felled 
 him in his tracks. The flock of fowl flew squawk- 
 ing out of the door. The women screamed, and the 
 men howled with laughter. Adler flourished an- 
 other loaf and vowed vengeance upon bird or beast 
 that did not let the butter alone. 
 
 I have been often enough out of patience with 
 
94 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the ways of the labor men which seem to me to be 
 the greatest hindrance to the success of their cause ; 
 but I am not in danger of forgetting the other side 
 which makes that cause — if for no other reason, 
 because of an experience I had in Buffalo that year. 
 In a planing-mill in which I had found employment 
 I contracted with the boss to plane doors, sandpaper 
 them, and plug knot-holes at fifteen cents a door. 
 It was his own offer, and I did the work well, better 
 than it had been done before, so he said himself. 
 But when he found at the end of the week that I 
 had made $15 where my slow-coach predeces- 
 sor had made only ten, he cut the price down to 
 twelve cents. I objected, but in the end swallowed 
 my anger and, by putting on extra steam and work- 
 ing overtime, made ^16 the next week. The boss 
 examined the work very carefully, said it was 
 good, paid my wages, and cut down the price to 
 ten cents. He did not want his men to make 
 over ^10 a week, he said; it was not good for 
 them. I quit then, after giving him my opinion of 
 him and of the chances of his shop. I do not know 
 where he may be now, but wherever he is, I will 
 warrant that my prediction came true. There is in 
 Danish an old proverb, " Falsk slaar sin egen Herre 
 paa Hals," which is to say that chickens come home 
 to roost, and that right in the end does prevail over 
 might. The Lord Chief Justice over all is not to 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 95 
 
 be tricked. If the labor men will only remember 
 that, and devote, let us say, as much time to their 
 duties as 'to fighting for their rights, they will get 
 them sooner. Which is not saying that there is not 
 a time to strike. Witness my experience with the 
 planing-mill man. 
 
 I struck not only against him, but against the 
 whole city of Buffalo. I shook the dust of it from 
 my feet and went out to work with a gang on a 
 new railroad then being built through Cattaraugus 
 County — the Buffalo and Washington, I think. 
 Near a village called Coonville our job was cut out 
 for us. We were twenty in the gang, and we were 
 to build the line across an old dry river-bed at that 
 point. In the middle of the river there had once 
 been a forest-clad island. This we attacked with 
 pickaxe and spade and carried it away piecemeal 
 in our wheelbarrows. It fell in with the hottest 
 weather of the year. Down in the hollow where 
 no wind blew it was utterly unbearable. I had 
 never done such work before, and was not built 
 for it. I did my best to keep up with the gang, 
 but my chest heaved and my heart beat as though 
 it would burst. There were nineteen Irishmen in 
 the gang — big, rough fellows who had picked me 
 out, as the only " Dutchman," as the butt for their 
 coarse jokes ; but when they saw that the work was 
 plainly too much for me, the other side of this curi- 
 
96 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ously contradictory, mischief-loving, and big-hearted 
 people came out. They invented a thousand excuses 
 to get me out of the line. Water was certainly not 
 their daily diet, but they fell victims, one and all, 
 to the most ravening thirst, which required the 
 despatching of me every hour to the spring a 
 quarter of a mile away to fill the pail. If they 
 could not empty it quickly enough, they managed 
 to upset it, and, to cover up the fraud, cursed 
 each other roundly for their clumsiness. Between 
 whiles they worried me as ever with their horse- 
 play ; but I had seen the real man behind it, and 
 they might have called me Bismarck, had they 
 chosen, without offence. 
 
 The heat, the work, and the slave-driver of a fore- 
 man were too much for them even, and before the 
 end of a week the gang was broken and scattered 
 wide. I was on the roati again looking for work 
 on a farm. It was not to be had. Perhaps I did 
 not try very hard. Sunday morning found me 
 spending my last quarter for breakfast in an inn 
 at Lime Lake. When I had eaten, I went out in 
 the fields and sat with my back against a tree, and 
 listened to the church-bells that were ringing also, 
 I knew, in my home four thousand miles away. 
 I saw the venerable Domkirke, my father's gray 
 head in his pew, and Her, young and innocent, in 
 the women's seats across the aisle. I heard the old 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 
 
 97 
 
 pastor's voice in the solemn calm, and my tears fell 
 upon her picture that had called up the vision. It 
 was as if a voice spoke to me and said to get up 
 and be a man ; that if I wanted to win Elizabeth, 
 to work for her was the way, and not idling my 
 days away on the 
 road. And I got 
 right up, and, set- 
 ting my face to- 
 ward Buffalo, went 
 by the shortest cut 
 back to my work. 
 I walked day 
 and night, pur- 
 sued in the dark 
 by a hundred 
 skulking curs that 
 lurked behind 
 trees until I came 
 abreast of them 
 and then sallied 
 out to challenge my progress. I stoned them and 
 went on. Monday's setting sun saw me outside 
 Buffalo, tired, but with a new purpose. I had walked 
 fifty miles without stopping or eating. I slept under 
 a shed that night, and the very next day found 
 work at good wages on some steamers the Erie 
 Railroad was then building for the Lake Superior 
 
 Our Old Pastor. 
 
98 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 trade. With intervals of other employment when 
 for any reason work in the ship-yard was slack, I 
 kept that up all winter, and became quite opulent, 
 even to the extent of buying a new suit of clothes, 
 the first I had had 'since I landed. I paid off all 
 my debts, and quarrelled with all my friends about 
 religion. I never had any patience with a person 
 who says " there is no God." The man is a fool, 
 and therefore cannot be reasoned with. But in 
 those days I was set on converting him, as my 
 viking forefathers did when from heathen they 
 became Christians — by fire and sword if need be. 
 I smote the infidels about me hip and thigh, but 
 there were a good many of them, and they kept 
 springing up, to my great amazement. Probably 
 the constant warfare imparted a tinge of fierceness 
 to that whole period of my life, for I remember that 
 one of my employers, a Roman Catholic builder, 
 discharged me for disagreeing with him about the 
 saints, telling me that I was " too blamed indepen- 
 dent, anyhow." I suspect I must have been a 
 rather unlovely customer, take it all together. 
 Still, every once in a while it boils up in me yet 
 against the discretion that has come with the years, 
 and I want to slam in after the old fashion. Seems 
 to me we are in danger of growing stale with all 
 our soft speeches nowadays. 
 
 Things enough happened to take down my self- 
 
WORKING AND WANDERING 
 
 99 
 
 esteem a good many pegs. It was about this time 
 I made up my mind to go into the newspaper busi- 
 ness. It seemed to me that a reporter's was the 
 highest and noblest of all callings; no one could 
 sift wrong from right as he, and 
 punish the wrong. In that I was 
 right. I have not changed my 
 opinion on that point one whit, 
 and I am sure I never shall. The 
 power of fact is the mightiest 
 lever of this or of any day. The 
 reporter has his hand upon it, 
 and it is his grievous fault if he 
 does not use it well. I thought 
 I would make a good reporter. 
 ]V[y father had edited our local 
 newspaper, and such little help 
 as I had been of to him had given me a taste for 
 the business. Being of that mind, I went to the 
 Courier office one morning and asked for the editor. 
 He was not in. Apparently nobody was. I wan- 
 dered through room after room, all empty, till at last 
 I came to one in which sat a man with a paste-pot 
 and a pair of long shears. This must be the editor; 
 he had the implements of his trade. I told him my 
 errand while he clipped away. 
 
 " What is it you want ? '' he asked, when I had 
 ceased speaking and waited for an answer. 
 
 When I worked in the 
 Buffalo Ship-yard. 
 
lOO THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 " Work," I said. 
 
 "Work!" said he, waving me haughtily away 
 with the shears ; " we don't work here. This is a 
 newspaper office." 
 
 I went, abashed. I tried the Express next. 
 This time I had the editor pointed out to me. He 
 was just coming through the business office. At 
 the door I stopped him and preferred my request. 
 He looked me over, a lad fresh from the shipyard, 
 with horny hands and a rough coat, and asked : — 
 
 " What are you .? " 
 
 " A carpenter," I said. 
 
 The man turned upon his heel with a loud, rasp- 
 ing laugh and shut the door in my face. For a 
 moment I stood there stunned. His ascending 
 steps on the stairs brought back my senses. I ran 
 to the door, and flung it open. " You laugh ! " I 
 shouted, shaking my fist at him, standing halfway 
 up the stairs, " you laugh now, but wait — " And 
 then I got the grip of my temper and slammed the 
 door in my turn. All the same, in that hour it was 
 settled that I was to be a reporter. I knew it as I 
 went out into the street. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 I GO INTO BUSINESS, HEADLONG 
 
 Somewhat suddenly and quite unexpectedly, a 
 business career opened for me that winter. Once 
 I had tried to crowd into it uninvited, but the result 
 was not good. It was when I had observed that, 
 for the want of the window reflectors which were 
 much in use in the old country, American ladies 
 were at a disadvantage in their homes in not being 
 able to make out undesirable company at a dis- 
 tance, themselves unseen, and conveniently forget- 
 ting that they were " in." This civilizing agency 
 I set about supplying forthwith. I made a model 
 and took it to a Yankee business man, to whom I 
 explained its use. He, listened attentively, took the 
 model, and said he had a good mind to have me 
 locked up for infringing the patent laws of other 
 lands ; but because I had sinned from ignorance he 
 would refrain. His manner was so impressive that 
 he really made me uneasy lest I had broken some 
 kind of a law I knew not of. From the fact that 
 not long after window reflectors began to make 
 their appearance in Buffalo, I infer that, whatever 
 
102 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the enactment, it did not apply to natives, or else 
 that he was a very fearless man, willing to take the 
 risk from which he would save me — a sort of com- 
 mercial philanthropist. However, by that time I 
 had other things to think of, being a drummer and 
 a very energetic one. 
 
 It came about in this way : some countrymen of 
 mine had started a cooperative furniture-factory 
 in Jamestown, where there were water-power and 
 cheap lumber. They had no capital, but just below 
 was the oil country, where everybody had money, 
 slathers of it. New wells gushed every day, and 
 boom towns were springing up all along the Alle- 
 gheny valley. Men were streaming into it from 
 everywhere, and needed furniture. If once they 
 got the grip on that country, reasoned the furniture- 
 makers, they would get rich quickly with the rest. 
 The thing was to get it. To do that they needed 
 a man who could talk. Perhaps they remembered 
 the creation of the world the year before. At all 
 events, they sent up to Buffalo and asked me if I 
 would try. 
 
 I slammed my tool-box shut and started for 
 Jamestown on the next train. Twenty-four hours 
 later saw me headed for the oil country, equipped 
 with a mighty album and a price-list. The album 
 contained pictures of the furniture I had for sale. 
 All the way down I studied the price-list, and when 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS IO3 
 
 I reached Titusville I knew to a cent what it cost 
 my employers per foot to make ash extension 
 tables. I only wish they had known half as well. 
 
 My first customer was a grumpy old shopkeeper 
 who needed neither tables nor bedsteads, so he 
 said. But I had thought it all over and made up 
 my mind that the first blow was half the battle. 
 Therefore I knew better. I pushed my album 
 under his nose, and it fell open at the extension 
 tables. Cheap, I said, and rattled off the price. I 
 saw him prick up his ears, but he only growled that 
 probably they were no good. 
 
 What ! my extension tables no good .'' I dared 
 him to try them, and he gave me an order for a 
 dozen, but made me sign an agreement that they 
 were to be every way as represented. I would have 
 backed my tables with an order for the whole shop, 
 so sure was I that they could not be beaten. The 
 idea ! With the fit of righteous indignation upon 
 me, I went out and sold every other furniture- 
 dealer in Titusville a bill of tables ; not one of 
 them escaped. At night, when I had sent the 
 order home, I set out for Oil City, so as to lose no 
 valuable time. 
 
 It was just the same there. For some reason 
 they were suspicious of the extension tables, yet 
 they wanted nothing else. I had to give ironclad 
 guarantees that they were as represented, which I 
 
I04 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 did impatiently enough. There was a thunder- 
 storm raging at the .time. The lightning had 
 struck a tank, and the burning oil ran down a hill 
 
 and set the 
 
 ,..,, «?i< ' town on fire. 
 
 ■- ■'■^^■ — - ; One end of it 
 
 was burninor 
 while I was 
 canvassing the 
 other, mental- 
 ly calculating 
 how many ex- 
 tension tables 
 would be 
 needed to re- 
 place those 
 that were lost. 
 People did not 
 seem to have 
 heard of any 
 other kind of 
 furniture in 
 that country. 
 Walnut bed- 
 steads, marble- 
 
 " One end of the town was burning while I was 
 canvassing the other." 
 
 top bureaus, turned washstands — they passed them 
 all by to fall upon the tables with shrill demand. I 
 made out their case to suit the facts, as I swept 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS 105 
 
 down through that region, scattering extension 
 tables right and left. It was the excitement, I 
 reasoned, the inrush of population from every- 
 where ; probably everybody kept boarders, more 
 every day ; had to extend their tables to seat them. 
 I saw a great opportunity and resolutely grasped it. 
 If it was tables they wanted, tables it should be. I 
 let all the rest of the stock go and threw myself on 
 the tables exclusively. Town after town I filled 
 with them. Night after night the mails groaned 
 under the heav)^ orders for extension tables I sent 
 north. From Allegheny City alone an order of a 
 thousand dollars' worth from a single reputable 
 dealer went home, and I figured in my note-book 
 that night a commission of ^50 for myself plus my 
 salary. 
 
 I could know nothing of the despatches that 
 were hot on my trail ever since my first order came 
 from Titusville, telling me to stop, let up on the 
 tables, come home, anything ; there was a mistake 
 in the price. They never overtook me. My pace 
 was too hot for that. Anyhow, I doubt if I would 
 have paid any attention to them. I had my in- 
 structions and was selling according to orders. 
 Business was good, getting better every day. The 
 firm wrote to my customers, but they merely sent 
 back copies of the iron-clad contract. They had 
 seen my instructions, and they knew it was all 
 
I06 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 right. It was not until I brought up, my last 
 penny gone, in Rochester, near the Ohio line, that 
 the firm established communication with me at 
 last. Their instructions were brief : to come home 
 and sell no more tables. They sent ^lo, but gave 
 me no clew to their curious decision, with things 
 booming as they were. 
 
 Being in the field I considered that, whatever 
 was up, I had a better command of the situation. 
 I decided that I would not go home, — at least not 
 until I had sold a few more extension tables while 
 they were in such demand. I made that ^lo go 
 farther than $io ever went before. It took me a 
 little way into Ohio, to Youngstown, and then back 
 to Pennsylvania, to Warren and Meadville and 
 Corry. My previous training in going hungry for 
 days came in handy at last. In the interests of 
 commerce, I let my dinners go. So I was enabled 
 to make a final dash to Erie, where I planted my 
 last batch of tables before I went home, happy. 
 
 I got home in time to assist in the winding up 
 of the concern. The iron-clad contracts had done 
 the business. My customers would not listen to 
 explanations. When told that the price of those 
 tables was lower than the cost of working up the 
 wood, they replied that it was none of their busi- 
 ness. They had their contracts. The Allegheny 
 man threatened suit, if I remember rightly, and 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS 10/ 
 
 the firm gave up. Nobody blamed me, for I had 
 sold according to orders ; but instead of $450 which 
 I had figured out as my commission, I got seventy- 
 five cents. It was half of what my employer had. 
 He divided squarely, and I could not in reason 
 complain. 
 
 I sat in the restaurant where he had explained the 
 situation to me, and tried to telescope my ambi- 
 tions down to the seventy-five-cent standard, when 
 my eyes fell upon a copy of Harper s Weekly 
 that lay on the table. Absent-mindedly I read an 
 advertisement in small type, spelling it over idly 
 while I was trying to think what to do next. 
 
 " Wanted," it read, " by the Myers Manufactur- 
 ing Company, agents to sell a patent flat and flut- 
 ing iron. Samples 75 cents." 
 
 The address was somewhere in John Street, New 
 York. Samples seventy-five cents ! I repeated it me- 
 chanically. Why, that was just the size of my pile. 
 And right in my line of canvassing, too ! In ten 
 minutes it was on the way to New York and I had 
 secured a provisional customer in the cook at the 
 restaurant for an iron that would perform what this 
 one promised, iron the skirt and flute the flounce 
 too. In three days the iron came and proved good. 
 I started in canvassing Jamestown with it, and in 
 a week had secured orders for one hundred and 
 twenty, upon which my profit would be over ^80. 
 
io8 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Something of business ways must have stuck to 
 me, after all, from my one excursion into the realm 
 of trade ; for when it came to delivering the goods 
 and I had no money, I went boldly to a business 
 man whose wife was on my books, and offered, if 
 he would send for the irons, to pay for them as I 
 took them out of the store. He made no bones 
 about it, but sent for the irons and handed them 
 over to me to pay for when I could. So men are 
 made. Commercial character, as it is rated on 
 'change, I had none before that; but I had after. 
 How could I disappoint a man like that ? 
 
 The confidence of the community I had not lost 
 through my too successful trip as a drummer, at all 
 events. Propositions came speedily to me to " travel 
 in " pianos and pumps for local concerns. It never 
 rains but it pours. An old schoolmate who had 
 been ordained a clergyman wrote to me from Den- 
 mark to find him a charge among the Danish settle- 
 ments out West. But neither pumps, pianos, nor 
 parsons had power to swerve me from my chosen 
 course. With them went bosses and orders ; with 
 the flat-iron cherished independence. When I 
 had sold out Jamestown, I made a bee-line for Pitts- 
 burg, a city that had taken my fancy because of its 
 brisk business ways. They were brisk indeed. 
 Grant's second campaign for the Presidency was 
 in full swing. On my second night in town I went 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS 
 
 109 
 
 "I went to hear Horace Greeley address an open-air meeting." 
 
 to hear Horace Greeley address an open-air meet- 
 ing. I can see his noble old head yet above the 
 crowd, and hear his opening appeal. Farther I 
 never got. A marching band of uniformed shouters 
 for Grant had cut risht through the crowd. As it 
 passed I felt myself suddenly seized ; an oilcloth 
 cape was' thrown over my head, a campaign cap 
 jammed after, and I found myself marching away 
 
no THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 with a torch on my shoulder to the tune of a brass 
 band just ahead. How many others of Mr. Greeley's 
 hearers fared as I did I do not know. The thing 
 seemed so ludicrous (and if I must march I really 
 cared very little whether it was for Greeley or 
 Grant) that I stuck it out, hoping as we went to 
 come somewhere upon my hat, which had been lost 
 in the sudden attack; but I never saw it again. 
 
 Speaking of parading, my old desire to roam, 
 that kept cropping out at intervals, paid me a 
 characteristic trick at this time. I was passing 
 through a horse-market when I saw a fine-looking, 
 shapely young horse put up at what seemed a ridicu- 
 lously low price. Eighteen dollars was the bid, 
 and it was about to be knocked down at that. The 
 October sun was shining warm and bright. A 
 sudden desire to get on the horse and ride out 
 into the wide world, away from the city and the 
 haunts of men, never to come back, seized me. I 
 raised the bid to ^19. Almost before I knew, the 
 beast was knocked down to me and I had paid 
 over the money. It left me with exactly $6 to my 
 name. 
 
 Leading the animal by the halter, I went down 
 the street and sat on the stoop of the Robinson 
 House to think. With every step, perplexities I 
 hadn't thought of sprang up. In the first place, I 
 could not ride. I had always wanted to, but had 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS 
 
 III 
 
 never learned. Even if I had been able to, where 
 was I going, and to do what ? I couldn't ride 
 around and sell flat-irons. The wide world seemed 
 suddenly a cold and far-off place, and ^6 but small 
 backing in an attack upon it, with a hungry horse 
 waiting to be fed. That was only too evident. 
 
 "The wide world seemed suddenly a cold and far-off place." 
 
 The beast was tearing the hitching-post with its 
 teeth in a way that brooked no delay. Evidently 
 it had a healthy appetite. The conclusion was 
 slowly dawning upon me that I had made a fool 
 of myself, when the man who had bid ^i8 came 
 by and saw me sitting there. He stopped to ask 
 what was the matter, and I told him frankly. He 
 
112 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 roared and gave me $i8 for the beast. I was glad 
 enough to give it up. I never owned a horse before 
 or since, and I had that less than fifteen minutes ; 
 but it was the longest quarter of an hour since I 
 worked in the coal-mine. 
 
 The flat-iron did not go in Pittsburg. It was too 
 cheap. During a brief interval I peddled cam- 
 paign books, but shortly found a^ more expensive 
 iron, and had five counties in western Pennsyl- 
 vania allotted to me as territory. There followed 
 a winter of great business. Before it was half over 
 I had achieved a bank account, though how I man- 
 aged it is a mystery to me till this day. Simple as 
 the reckoning of my daily trade ought to be, by no 
 chance could I ever make it foot up as it should. 
 I tried honestly every night, but the receipts would 
 never square with the expenditures, do what I 
 might. I kept them carefully apart in different 
 pockets, but mixed they would get in spite of all. 
 I had to call it square, however far the footing was 
 out of the way, or sit up all night, which I would 
 not do. I remember well the only time I came out 
 even. I was so astonished that I would not believe 
 it, but had to go all over the account again. That 
 night I slept the sleep of the just. The next morn- 
 ing, when I was starting out on my route with a 
 clean conscience and a clean slate, a shopkeeper 
 rapped on his window as I went by to tell me that 
 
,1 GO INTO BUSINESS I13 
 
 I had given him the previous day a twenty-dollar 
 bill for a ten, in making change. After that I gave 
 up trying. 
 
 I vi^as no longer alone. From Buffalo my old 
 chum Ronne had come, hearing that I was doing 
 well, to join me, and from Denmark an old school- 
 fellow, whose life at twenty-two had been wrecked 
 by drink and who wrote begging to be allowed to 
 come. His mother pleaded for him too, but it was 
 not needed. He had enclosed in his letter the 
 strongest talisman of all, a letter written by Eliza- 
 beth in the long ago when we were children to- 
 gether. I have it yet. He came, and I tried hard 
 to break him of his failing. But I had undertaken 
 a job that was too big for me. Upon my return 
 from a Western trip I found that he had taken to 
 drinking again, and in his cups had enlisted. His 
 curse followed him into the army. He rose to the 
 rank of sergeant, only to fall again and suffer degra- 
 dation. The other day he shot himself at the post 
 where he was stationed, after nearly thirty years of 
 service. Yet in all his ups and downs he never for- 
 got his home. While his mother lived he helped 
 support her in far-off Denmark ; and when she was 
 gone, no month passed that he did not send home 
 the half of his wages for the support of his crippled 
 sister in the old town. Charles was not bad. He 
 was a "poor, helpless, unhappy boy, who came to me 
 
114 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 for help, and I had none to give, God pity him and 
 me. 
 
 The Western trip I spoke of was my undoing. 
 Puffed up by my success as a salesman, I yielded in 
 an evil hour to the blandishments of my manufac- 
 turers, and accepted the general agency of the State 
 of Illinois, with headquarters in Chicago. It sounded 
 well, but it did not work well. Chicago had not yet 
 got upon its feet after the great fire ; and its young 
 men were too sharp for me. In six weeks they had 
 cleaned me out bodily, had run away with my irons 
 and with money they borrowed of me to start them 
 in business. I returned to Pittsburg as poor as 
 ever, to find that the agents I had left behind in my 
 Pennsylvania territory had dealt with me after the 
 same fashion. The firm for which I worked had 
 connived at the frauds. My friends had left me. 
 The one I spoke of was in the army. Ronne had 
 given up in discouragement, and was at work in a 
 rolling-mill. In the utter wreck of all my hopes I 
 was alone again. 
 
 Angry and sore, I went up the Allegheny River, 
 with no definite purpose in mind except to get away 
 from everybody I knew. At Franklin I fell ill with 
 a sneaking fever. It was while I lay helpless in a 
 lonely tavern by the riverside that the crushing blow 
 fell. Letters from home, sent on from Pittsburg, 
 told me that Elizabeth was to be married. A cav- 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS IIS 
 
 airy officer who was in charge of the border pohce, 
 a dashing fellow and a good soldier, had won her 
 heart. The wedding was to be in the summer. It 
 was then the last week in April. At the thought I 
 turned my face to the wall, and hoped that I might 
 die. 
 
 But one does not die of love at twenty-four. The 
 days that passed slowly saw me leave my sick-bed 
 and limp down to the river on sunny days, to sit and 
 watch the stream listlessly for hours, hoping nothing, 
 grasping nothing, except that it was all over. In all 
 my misadventures that was the one thing I had 
 never dreamed of. If I did, I as quickly banished 
 the thought as preposterous. That she should be 
 another's bride seemed so utterly impossible that, 
 sick and feeble as I was, I laughed it to scorn even 
 then ; whereat I fell to reading the fatal letter again, 
 and trying to grasp its meaning. It made it all only 
 the more perplexing that I should not know who he 
 was or what he was. I had never heard of him be- 
 fore, in that town where I thought I knew every liv- 
 ing soul. That he must be a noble fellow I knew, or 
 he could not have won her ; but who — why — what — 
 what had come over everything in such a short time, 
 and what was this ugly dream that was setting my 
 brain awhirl and shutting out the sunlight and the 
 day.? Presently I was in a relapse, and it was all 
 darkness to me, and oblivion. 
 
Il6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 When at last I got well enough to travel, I set my 
 face toward the east, and journeyed on foot through 
 the northern coal regions of Pennsylvania by slow 
 stages, caring little whither I went, and earning just 
 enough by peddling flat-irons to pay my way. It was 
 spring when I started ; the autumn tints were on the 
 leaves when I brought up in New York at last, as 
 nearly restored as youth and the long tramp had 
 power to do. But the restless energy that had made 
 of me a successful salesman was gone. I thought 
 only, if I thought at all, of finding some quiet place 
 where I could sit and see the world go by that con- 
 cerned me no longer. With a dim idea of being 
 sent into the farthest wilds as an operator, I went 
 to a business college on Fourth Avenue and 
 paid ^20 to learn telegraphing. It was the 
 last money I had. I attended the school in the 
 afternoon. In the morning I peddled flat-irons, 
 earning money for my board, and so made out. 
 
 One day, while I was so occupied, I saw among 
 the '' want " advertisements in a newspaper one 
 offering the position of city editor on a Long Island 
 City weekly to a competent man. Something of my 
 old ambition stirred within me. It did not occur to 
 me that city editors were not usually obtained by 
 advertising, still less that I was not competent, hav- 
 ing only the vaguest notions of what the functions 
 of a city editor might be. I applied for the job, and 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS II7 
 
 got it at once. Eight dollars a week was to be my 
 salary ; my job, to fill the local column and attend 
 to the affairs of Hunter's Point and Blissville gen- 
 erally, politics excluded. The editor attended to 
 that. In twenty-four hours I was hard at work 
 writing up my then most ill-favored bailiwick. It 
 is none too fine yet, but in those days, when every 
 nuisance crowded out of New York found refuge 
 there, it stunk to heaven. 
 
 Certainly I had entered journalism by the back 
 door, very far back at that, when I joined the staff 
 of the Review. Signs of that appeared speedily, 
 and multiplied day by day. On the third day of 
 my employment I beheld the editor-in-chief being 
 thrashed * down the street by an irate coachman 
 whom he had offended, and when, in a spirit of loy- 
 alty, I would have cast in my lot with him, I was 
 held back by one of the printers with the laughing 
 comment that that was his daily diet and that it was 
 good for him. That was the only way any one ever 
 got any satisfaction or anything else out of him. 
 Judging from the goings on about the office in the 
 two weeks I was there, he must have been exten- 
 sively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying 
 to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, 
 I met him on the stairs, propelled by his washer- 
 woman, who brought her basket down on his head 
 with every step he took, calling upon the populace 
 
Il8 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 (the stairs were outside the building) to witness just 
 punishment meted out to him for faiHng to pay for 
 the washing of his shirts, I rightly concluded that the 
 city editor's claim stood no show. I left him owing 
 me two weeks' pay, but I freely forgive him. I 
 think I got my money's worth of experience. I did 
 not let grass grow under my feet as " city editor." 
 Hunter's Point had received for once a thorough 
 raking over, and I my first lesson in hunting the 
 elusive item and, when found, making a note of it. 
 Except for a Newfoundland pup which some 
 one had given me, I went back over the river as 
 poor as I had come. The dog proved rather a 
 doubtful possession as the days went by. Its 
 appetite was tremendous, and its preference for 
 my society embarrassingly unrestrained. It would 
 not be content to sleep anywhere else than in my 
 room. If I put it out in the yard, it forthwith or- 
 ganized a search for me in which the entire neigh- 
 borhood was compelled to take part, willy-nilly. 
 Its manner of doing it boomed the local trade in 
 hair-brushes and mantel bric-a-brac, but brought 
 on complications with the landlord in the morning 
 that usually resulted in the departure of Bob and 
 myself for other pastures. Part with him I could 
 not ; for Bob loved me. Once I tried, when it 
 seemed that there was no choice. I had been put 
 out for perhaps the tenth time, and I had no more 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS II9 
 
 money left to provide for our keep. A Wall Street 
 broker had advertised for a watch-dog, and I went 
 with Bob to see him. But when he would have 
 counted the three gold pieces he offered into my 
 hand, I saw Bob's honest brown eyes watching 
 me with a look of such faithful affection that I 
 dropped the coins as if they burned, and caught him 
 about the neck to tell him that we would never part. 
 Bob put his huge paws on my shoulders, licked my 
 face, and barked such a joyous bark of challenge to 
 the world in general that even the Wall Street man 
 was touched. 
 
 " I guess you are too good friends to part," he 
 said. And so we were. 
 
 We left Wall Street and its gold behind to go 
 out and starve together. Literally we did that in 
 the days that followed. I had taken to peddling 
 books, an illustrated Dickens issued by the Harpers, 
 but I barely earned enough by it to keep life in us 
 and a transient roof over our heads. I call it tran- 
 sient because it was rarely the same two nights 
 together, for causes which I have explained. In the 
 day Bob made out rather better than I. He could 
 always coax a supper out of the servant at the base- 
 ment^ gate by his curvetings and tricks, while I 
 pleaded vainly and hungrily with the mistress at the 
 front door. Dickens was a drug in the market. A 
 curious fatality had given me a copy of " Hard 
 
I20 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Times " to canvass with. I think no amount of 
 good fortune could turn my head while it stands 
 in my bookcase. One look at it brings back too 
 vividly that day when Bob and I had gone, desperate 
 and breakfastless, from the last bed we might know 
 for many days, to try to sell it and so get the means 
 to keep us for another twenty-four hours. 
 
 It was not only breakfast we lacked. The day 
 before we had had only a crust together. Two 
 days without food is not good preparation for a 
 day's canvassing. We did the best we could. . Bob 
 stood by and wagged his tail persuasively while I 
 did the talking ; but luck was dead against us, and 
 " Hard Times " stuck to us for all we tried. Even- 
 ing came and found us down by the Cooper Insti- 
 tute, with never a cent. Faint with hunger, I sat 
 down on the steps under the illuminated clock, 
 while Bob stretched himself at my feet. He had 
 beguiled the cook in one of the last houses we called 
 at, and his stomach was filled. From the corner I 
 had looked on enviously. For me there was no 
 supper, as there had been no dinner and no break- 
 fast. To-morrow there was another day of starva- 
 tion. How long was this to last ? Was it any 
 use to keep up a struggle so hopeless ? From 
 this very spot I had gone, hungry and wrathful, 
 three years before when the dining Frenchmen 
 for whom I wanted to fight thrust me forth from 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS 
 
 121 
 
 their company. Three wasted years ! Then I had 
 one cent in my pocket, I remembered. To-day I 
 had not even so much. I was bankrupt in hope 
 
 ' Hard Times.' 
 
 and purpose. Nothing had gone right ; nothing 
 would ever go right ; and, worse, I did not care. I 
 drummed moodily upon my book. Wasted ! Yes, 
 that was right. My life was wasted, utterly wasted. 
 
122 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 A voice hailed me by name, and Bob sat up, 
 looking attentively at me for his cue as to the treat- 
 ment of the owner of it. I recognized in him the 
 principal of the telegraph school where I had gone 
 until my money gave out. He seemed suddenly 
 struck by something. 
 
 " Why, what are you doing here ? " he asked. I 
 told him Bob and I were just resting after a day of 
 canvassing. 
 
 " Books ! " he snorted. " I guess they won't 
 make you rich. Now, how would you like to be 
 a reporter, if you have got nothing better to do ? 
 The manager of a news agency down town asked 
 me to-day to find him a bright young fellow whom 
 he could break in. It isn't much — $io a week to 
 start with. But it is better than peddling books, 
 I know." 
 
 He poked over the book in my hand and read the 
 title. " Hard Times," he said, with a little laugh. 
 " I guess so. What do you say ? I think you will 
 do. Better come along and let me give you a note 
 to him now." 
 
 As in a dream, I walked across the street with 
 him to his office and got the letter which was to 
 make me, half-starved and homeless, rich as Croesus, 
 it seemed to me. Bob went along, and before I 
 departed from the school a better home than I could 
 give him was found for him with my benefactor. I 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS 123 
 
 was to bring him the next day. I had to admit that 
 it was best so. That night, the last which Bob 
 and I spent together, we walked up and down 
 Broadway, where there was quiet, thinking it over. 
 What had happened had stirred me profoundly. 
 For the second time I saw a hand held out to save 
 me from wreck just when it seemed inevitable ; 
 and I knew it for His hand, to whose will I was 
 at last beginning to bow in humility that had been a 
 stranger to me before. It had ever been my own 
 will, my own way, upon which I insisted. In the 
 shadow of Grace Church I bowed my head against the 
 granite wall of the gray tower and prayed for strength 
 to do the work which I had so long and arduously 
 sought and which had no.w come to me ; the while 
 Bob sat and looked on, saying clearly enough with 
 his wagging tail that he did not know what was 
 going on, but that he was sure it was all right. 
 Then we resumed our wanderings. One thought, 
 and only one, I had room for. I did not pursue it ; 
 it walked with me wherever I went : She was not 
 married yet. Not yet. When the sun rose, I 
 washed my face and hands in a dog's drinking- 
 trough, pulled my clothes into such shape as I could, 
 and went with Bob to his new home. That parting 
 over, I walked down to 23 Park Row and delivered 
 my letter to the desk editor in the New York News 
 Association, up on the top floor. 
 
124 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 He looked me over a little doubtfully, but evi- 
 dently impressed with the early hours I kept, told 
 me that I might try. He waved me to a desk, bid- 
 ding me wait until he had made out his morning 
 book of assignments ; and with such scant ceremony 
 was I finally introduced to Newspaper Row, that 
 had been to me like an enchanted land. After 
 twenty-seven years of hard work in it, during which 
 I have been behind the scenes of most of the plays 
 that go to make up the sum of the life of the 
 metropolis, it exercises the old spell over me yet. 
 If my sympathies need quickening, my point of view 
 adjusting, I have only to go down to Park Row at 
 eventide, when the crowds are hurrying homeward 
 and the City Hall clock is lighted, particularly 
 when the snow lies on the grass in the park, and 
 stand watching them awhile, to find all things com- 
 ing right. It is Bob who stands by and watches 
 with me then, as on that night. 
 
 The assignment that fell to my lot when the 
 book was made out, the first against which my name 
 was written in a New York editor's book, was a 
 lunch of some sort at the Astor House. I have for- 
 gotten what was the special occasion. I remember 
 the bearskin hats of the Old Guard in it, but little 
 else. In a kind of haze, I beheld half the savory 
 viands of earth spread under the eyes and nostrils of 
 a man who had not tasted food for the third day. 
 
I GO INTO BUSINESS 125 
 
 I did not ask for any. I had reached that stage of 
 starvation that is like the still centre of a cyclone, 
 when no hunger is felt. But it may be that a touch 
 of it all crept into my report ; for when the editor 
 had read it, he said briefly : — 
 
 " You will do. Take that desk, and report at ten 
 every morning, sharp." 
 
 That night, when I was dismissed from the office, 
 I went up the Bowery to No. 185, where a Danish 
 family kept a boarding-house up under the roof. I 
 had work and wages now, and could pay. On the 
 stairs I fell in a swoon and lay there till some one 
 stumbled over me in the dark and carried me in. 
 My strength had at last given out. 
 
 So began my life as a newspaper man. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN WHICH I BECOME AN EDITOR AND RECEIVE 
 MY FIRST LOVE LETTER 
 
 I HAD my hands full that winter. The profession 
 I had entered by so thorny a path did not prove to 
 be a bed of roses. But I was not looking for roses. 
 I doubt if I would have known what to do with 
 them had there been any. Hard work and hard 
 knocks had been my portion heretofore, and I was 
 fairly trained down to that. Besides, now that the 
 question where the next meal was to come from 
 did not loom up whichever way I looked, the thing 
 for me was to be at work hard enough and long 
 enough to keep from thinking. With every letter 
 from home I expected to hear that she was married, 
 and then — I never got any farther. A furious kind 
 of energy took possession of me at the mere idea, 
 and I threw myself upon my work in a way that 
 speedily earned for me the name of a good reporter. 
 " Good " had reference to the quantity of work 
 done rather than to the quality of it. That was of 
 less account than our ability to "get around" to our 
 assignments ; necessarily so, for we mostly had six 
 
 126 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 
 
 127 
 
 or seven of an evening to attend, our route extend- 
 ing often from Harlem clear down to the Bowery. 
 So that they were nearly " on a line," we were sup- 
 posed to have no cause of complaint. Our office 
 sold news to morning and evening papers both, and 
 our working day, which began at 10 a.m., was sel- 
 dom over until one or two o'clock the next morning. 
 Three reporters had to attend to all the general 
 news of the city that did not come through the 
 regular department channels. 
 
 A queerly assorted trio we were : " Doc " Lynch, 
 who had graduated from the medical school to 
 Bohemia, foUdwing a natural bent, I suppose ; 
 Crafts, a Maine boy of angular frame and prodigious 
 self-confidence ; and myself. Lynch I have lost 
 sight of long ago. Crafts, I am told, is rich and 
 prosperous, the owner of a Western newspaper. 
 That was bound to happen to him. I remember 
 him in the darkest days of that winter, when to 
 small pay, hard work, and long hours had been 
 added an attack of measles that kept him in bed in 
 his desolate boarding-house, far from kindred and 
 friends. " Doc " and I had run in on a stolen visit 
 to fill their place as well as we might. We sat 
 around trying to look as cheerful as we could and 
 succeeding very poorly ; but Crafts's belief in him- 
 self and his star soared above any trivialities of 
 present discouragement. I see him now rising on 
 
128 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 his elbow and transfixing the two of us with long, 
 prophetic forefinger : — 
 
 " The secret of my success," he said, impressively, 
 "Hay to — " 
 
 We never found out to what he laid it, for we 
 both burst out laughing, and Crafts, after a passing 
 look of surprise, joined in. But that finger prophe- 
 sied truly. His pluck won the day, and won it 
 fairly. They were two good comrades in a tight 
 place. I shouldn't want any better. 
 
 Running around was only working off steam, of 
 which we had plenty. The long rides, on Harlem 
 assignments, in horse-cars with straw in the bottom 
 that didn't keep our feet from freezing until all feel- 
 ing in them was gone, were worse, a good deal. 
 At the mere thought of them I fall to nursing my 
 toes for reminiscent pangs. However, I had at least 
 enough to eat. At the downtown Delmonico's and 
 the other swell restaurants through the windows of 
 which I had so often gazed with hungry eyes, I now 
 sometimes sat at big spreads and public dinners, 
 never without thinking of the old days and the poor 
 fellows who might then be having my hard luck. 
 It was not so long since that I could have forgotten. 
 I bit a mark in the Mulberry Bend, too, as my pro- 
 fessional engagements took me that way, promising 
 myself that the day should come when I would have 
 time to attend to it. For the rest, if I had an hour 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 1 29 
 
 to spare, I put it in at the telegraph instrument. I 
 had still the notion that it might not be labor lost. 
 And though I never had professional use for it, it 
 did come handy to me as a reporter more than once. 
 There is scarcely anything one can learn that will 
 not sooner or later be useful to a newspaper man, if 
 he is himself of the kind that wants to be useful. 
 
 Along in the spring some politicians in South 
 Brooklyn who had started a weekly newspaper to 
 boom their own fortunes found themselves in 
 need of a reporter, and were told of a " young 
 Dutchman " who might make things go. I was 
 that "Dutchman." They offered me $15 a week, 
 and on May, 20, 1874, I carried my grip across 
 the river, and, all unconscious that I was on the 
 turning tide in my fortunes, cast in my lot with 
 '■ Beecher's crowd," as the boys in the office said 
 derisively when I left them. 
 
 In two weeks I was the editor of the paper. 
 That was not a vote of confidence, but pure econ- 
 omy on the part of my owners. They saved forty 
 dollars a week by giving me twenty-five and the 
 name of editor. The idea of an editor in anything 
 but the name I do not suppose had ever entered 
 their minds. Theirs was an " organ," and for the 
 purposes for which they had started it they thought 
 themselves abundantly able to run it. I, on my 
 part, quickly grew high notions of editorial inde- 
 
I30 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 pendence. Their purposes had nothing to do with 
 it. The two views proved irreconcilable. They 
 clashed quite regularly, and perhaps it was as much 
 that they were tired of the editor as that the paper 
 was a drag upon them that made them throw it up 
 after the fall elections, in which they won. The 
 press and the engine were seized for debt. The 
 last issue of the South Brooklyn News had been 
 put upon the street, and I went to the city to make 
 a bargain with the foundryman for the type. It 
 was in the closing days of the year. Christmas was 
 at the door, with its memories. Tired and dis- 
 heartened, I was on my way back, my business 
 done, as the bells rang in the Holy Eve. I stood 
 at the bow of a Fulton Street ferryboat listening 
 sadly to them, and watched the lights of the city 
 kindling alongshore. Of them all not one was for 
 me. It was all over, and I should have to strike a 
 new trail. Where would that lead } What did it 
 matter, anyhow ? Nobody cared. Why should I .'' 
 A beautiful meteor shot out of the heavens over- 
 head and spanned the river with a shining arc. I 
 watched it sail slowly over Williamsburg, its trail 
 glowing bright against the dark sky, and mechani- 
 cally the old wish rose to my lips. It was a super- 
 stition with us when we were children that if we 
 were quick enough to " wish out " before the star 
 was extinguished, the wish would come true. I 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 13I 
 
 had tried a hundred times, always to fail ; but for 
 once I had ample time. A bitter sigh smothered 
 the wish, half uttered. My chance had come too 
 late. Even now she might be another man's wife, 
 and I — I had just made another failure of it, as 
 usual. 
 
 It had never happened in all the holiday seasons 
 I had been away that a letter from home had 
 reached me in time for Christmas Eve, and it was 
 a sore subject with me. For it was ever the 
 dearest in the year to me, and is now. But that 
 evening, when I came home, in a very ill humor, 
 for the first time I found the coveted letter. It 
 told me of the death of my two older brothers and 
 of my favorite aunt. In a postscript my father 
 
 added that Lieutenant B , Elizabeth's affianced 
 
 husband, had died in the city hospital at Copen- 
 hagen. She herself was living- among strangers. 
 She had chosen her lover when the family de- 
 manded of her that she give him up as a hopeless 
 invalid. They thought it all for her good. Of her 
 I should have expected nothing less. But she shall 
 tell the story of that herself. 
 
 I read the letter through, then lay down upon my 
 bed and wept. When I arose, it was to go to the 
 owners of my paper with a proposition to buy it. 
 They laughed at me at first ; asked to see my 
 money. As a reporter for the news bureau I had 
 
132 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 saved up ^75, rather because I had no time to 
 spend it than with any definite notion of what I 
 was going to do with it. This I offered to them, 
 and pointed out that the sale of the old type, which 
 was all that was left of the paper beside the good- 
 will, would bring no more. One of them, more 
 reasonable than the rest — the one who had gener- 
 ally paid the scores while the others took the 
 tricks — was disposed to listen. The upshot of it 
 was that I bought the paper for $650, giving notes 
 for the rest, to be paid when I could. If I could 
 not, they were not much out. And then, again, I 
 might succeed. 
 
 I did ; by what effort I hesitate to set down here 
 lest I be not believed. The News was a big 
 four-page sheet. Literally every word in it I wrote 
 myself. I was my own editor, reporter, publisher, 
 and advertising agent. My pen kept two printers 
 busy all the week, and left me time to canvass for 
 advertisements, attend meetings, and gather the 
 news. Friday night the local undertaker, who 
 advertised in the paper and paid in kind, took the 
 forms over to New York, where the presswork was 
 done. In the early morning hours I shouldered 
 the edition — it was not very large in those days — 
 and carried it from Spruce Street down to Fulton 
 Ferry, and then home on a Fifth Avenue car. I 
 recall with what inward rage I submitted to being 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 1 33 
 
 held up by every chance poHceman and prodded 
 facetiously in the ribs with remarks about the " old 
 man's millions," etc. Once or twice it boiled over 
 and I was threatened with summary arrest. When 
 I got home, I slept on the counter with the edition 
 for my pillow, in order to be up with the first gleam 
 of daylight to skirmish for newsboys. I gathered 
 them in from street and avenue, compelled them to 
 come in if they were not willing, and made such 
 inducements for them that shortly South Brooklyn 
 resounded with the cry of " News " from sunrise to 
 supset on Saturday. The politicians who had been 
 laughing at my " weekly funeral " beheld with 
 amazement the paper thrust under their noses at 
 every step. They heard its praises, or the other 
 thing, sung on every hand. From their point of 
 view it was the same thing : the paper was talked 
 of. Their utmost effort had failed of that. When, 
 on June 5, Her birthday, I paid down in hard cash 
 what was left of the purchase sum and hoisted the 
 flag over an independent newspaper, freed from 
 debt, they came around with honeyed speeches to 
 make friends. I scarcely heard them. Deep down 
 in my soul a voice kept repeating unceasingly: 
 Elizabeth is free ! She is free, free ! That night,' 
 in the seclusion of my den, clutching grimly the 
 ladder upon which I had at last got my feet, I 
 resolved that I would reach the top, or die climb- 
 
134 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ing. The morning sun shone through my window 
 and found me sleepless, pouring out my heart to 
 her, four thousand miles away. 
 
 I carried the letter to the post-office myself, and 
 waited till I saw it started on its long journey. I 
 stood watching the carrier till he turned the corner ; 
 then went back to my work. 
 
 To that work there had been added a fresh spur 
 just when I was at last free from all trammels. 
 
 The other strongest of 
 human emotions had been 
 stirred wdthin me. In a 
 Methodist revival — it was 
 in the old Eighteenth Street 
 Church — I had fallen 
 under the spell of the 
 preacher's fiery eloquence. 
 Brother Simmons was of 
 the old circuit-riders' stock, 
 albeit their day was long 
 past in our staid commu- 
 nity. He had all their power, for the spirit burned 
 within him ; and he brought me to the altar 
 quickly, though in my own case conversion refused 
 to work the prescribed amount of agony. Perhaps 
 it was because I had heard Mr. Beecher question 
 the correctness of the prescription. When a man 
 travelling in the road found out, he said, that he had 
 
 Brother Simmons. 
 [The Rev. Ichabod Simmons.] 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 1 35 
 
 gone wrong, he did not usually roll in the dust and 
 agonize over his mistake; he just turned around 
 and went the other way. It struck me so, but none 
 the less with deep conviction. In fact, with the 
 heat of the convert, I decided on the spot to throw 
 up my editorial work and take to preaching. But 
 Brother Simmons would not hear of it. 
 
 " No, no, Jacob," he said ; " not that. We have 
 preachers enough. What the world needs is con- 
 secrated pens." 
 
 Then and there I consecrated mine. I wish I 
 could honestly say that it has always come up to 
 the high ideal set it then. I can say, though, that 
 it has ever striven toward it, and that scarce a day 
 has passed since that I have not thought of the 
 charge then laid upon it and upon me. 
 
 The immediate result was a campaign for reform 
 that made the town stare. It struck the politicians 
 first. They were Democrats, and I was running a 
 Democratic paper. I did it con amore^ too, for it 
 was in the days of the scandals of Grant's second 
 term, and the disgrace of it was foul. So far we 
 were agreed. But it happened that the chief obsta- 
 cle to Democratic success in the Twenty-second 
 Ward, where my paper was located, was the police 
 captain of the • precinct, John Mackellar, who died 
 the other day as Deputy Chief of the Borough of 
 Brooklyn. Mackellar was a Republican of a pro- 
 
136 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 nounced type and a good deal of a politician 
 besides. Therefore he must go. But he was my 
 friend. I had but two in the entire neighborhood 
 who really cared for me — Edward Wells, clerk in 
 a drug-store across the street, who was of my own 
 age, and Mackellar. Between us had sprung up a 
 strong attachment, and I could not think of having 
 Mackellar removed, particularly as he had done 
 nothing to deserve it. He was a good policeman. 
 I told the bosses so. They insisted ; pleaded 
 political expedience. I told them I would not 
 allow it, and when they went ahead in spite of me, 
 told the truth about it in my paper. The Twenty- 
 second was really a Republican ward. The atti- 
 tude of the News killed the job. 
 
 The Democratic bosses were indignant. 
 
 " How can we run the ward with you acting 
 that way.?" they asked. I told them I did not 
 care if they didn't. I could run it better myself, it 
 seemed. 
 
 They- said nothing. They had other resources. 
 The chief of them — he was a judge — came around 
 and had a friendly talk with me. He showed me 
 that I was going against my own interest. I was 
 just starting out in life. I had energy, education. 
 They were qualities that in politics were convertible 
 into gold, much gold, if I would but follow him and 
 his fortunes. 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 137 
 
 " I never had an education," he said. " I need 
 you. If you will stick to nne, I will make you rich." 
 
 I think he meant it. He certainly could have 
 done so had he chosen. He himself died rich. He 
 was not a bad fellow, as bosses go. But I did not 
 like boss politics. And the bait did not tempt me. 
 I never wanted to be rich. I am afraid it would 
 make me grasping ; I think I am built that way. 
 Anyhow, it is too much bother. I wanted to run 
 my own paper, and I told him so. 
 
 " Well," he said, " you are young. Think it 
 over." 
 
 It was some time after that I read in a newspaper, 
 upon returning from a hunting trip to Staten Island, 
 that I had been that day appointed an interpreter 
 in my friend the judge's court, at a salary of ^100 a 
 month. I went to him and asked him what it 
 meant. 
 
 " Well," he said, " we need an interpreter. There 
 are a good many Scandinavians and Germans in 
 my district. You know their language } " 
 
 " But," I protested, " I have no time to go inter- 
 preting police court cases. I don't want the office." 
 
 He pushed me out with a friendly shoulder-pat. 
 " You go back and wait till I send for you. We 
 can lump the cases, and we won't need you every 
 day." 
 
 In fact, they did not need me more than two or 
 
138 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 three times that month, at the end of which I drew 
 my pay with many qualms of conscience. My ser- 
 vices were certainly not worth the money I received. 
 Such is the soothing power of public " pap " : on the 
 second pay-day, though I had performed even less 
 service, I did not feel nearly so bad about it. My 
 third check I drew as a matter of course. I was 
 " one of the boys " now, and treated with familiarity 
 by men whom I did not like a bit, and who, I am 
 sure, did not like me. But the cordiality did not 
 long endure. It soon appeared that the interpreter 
 in the judge's court had other duties than merely to 
 see justice done to helpless foreigners ; among them 
 to see things politically as His Honor did. I did 
 not. A ruction followed speedily — I think it was 
 about our old friend Mackellar — that wound up by 
 his calling me an ingrate. It was a favorite word 
 of his, as I have noticed it is of all bosses, and it 
 meant everything reprehensible. He .did not dis- 
 charge me ; he couldn't. I was as much a part of 
 the court as he was, having been appointed under a 
 State law. But the power of the Legislature that 
 had created me was invoked to kill me, and, for 
 appearance's sake, the office. Before it adjourned, 
 the same Legislature resurrected the office, but not 
 me. So contradictory is human nature that by that 
 time I was quite ready to fight for my "rights." 
 But for once I was outclassed. The judge and the 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 1 39 
 
 Legislature were too many for me, and I retired as 
 gracefully as I could. 
 
 So ceased my career as a public officer, and 
 forever. It was the only office I ever held, and I 
 do not want another. I am ashamed yet, twenty- 
 five years after, of having held that one. Because, 
 however I try to gloss it over, I was, while I held 
 it, a sinecurist, pure and simple. 
 
 However, it did not dampen my zeal for reform 
 in the least. That encompassed the whole range 
 of my little world ; nor would it brook delay even 
 for a minute. It did not consider ways and means, 
 and was in nowise tempered with discretion. 
 Looking back now, it seems strange that I never 
 was made to figure in the police court in those 
 days in another capacity than that of interpreter. 
 Not that I did anything for which I should have 
 been rightly jailed. But people will object to being 
 dragged by the hair even in the ways of reform. 
 When the grocer on my corner complained that he 
 was being ruined by " beats " who did not pay their 
 bills and thereby compelled him to charge those 
 who did pay more, in order that he might live, I 
 started in at once to make those beats pay up. I 
 gave notice, in a plain statement of the case in my 
 editorial columns, that they must settle their scores 
 for the sake of the grocer and the general good, 
 or I would publish their names. I was as good as 
 
I40 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 my word. I not only published the. list of them, 
 but how much and how long they owed it, and 
 called upon them to pay or move out of the ward. 
 
 Did they move ? Well, no ! Perhaps it was too 
 much to expect. They were comfortable. They 
 stayed to poison the mind of the town against the 
 man who was lying awake nights to serve it ; in 
 which laudable effort they were ably seconded by 
 the corner grocer. I record without regret the 
 subsequent failure of that tradesman. There were 
 several things wrong with the details of my cam- 
 paign, — for one thing, I had omitted to include 
 him among the beats, — but in its large lines we 
 can all agree that it was right. It was only another 
 illustration of the difficulty of reducing high preach- 
 ing to practice. Instead of society hailing me as 
 its saviour, I grew personally unpopular. I doubt if 
 I had another friend in the world beside the two I 
 have mentioned. But the circulation of my paper 
 grew enormously. It was doubled and trebled 
 week by week — a fact which I accepted as public 
 recognition of the righteousness of my cause. I 
 was wrong in that. The fact was that ours was 
 a community of people with a normally healthy 
 appetite for knowing one's neighbor's business. I 
 suppose the thing has been mistaken before by inex- 
 perience for moral enthusiasm, and will be again. 
 
 I must stop here to tell the reason why I would 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 141 
 
 not convict the meanest thief on circumstantial 
 evidence. I would rather let a thousand go free 
 than risk with one what I risked and shudder yet 
 to think of. There had been some public excite- 
 ment that summer about mad dogs, especially spitz- 
 dogs. A good many persons had been bitten, and 
 the authorities of Massachusetts, if I remember 
 rightly, had put that particular breed under the 
 ban as dangerous at all times. There was one 
 always prowling about the lot behind my office, 
 through which the way led to my boarding-house, 
 and, when it snapped at my leg in passing one 
 day, I determined to kill it in the interest of public 
 safety. I sent my office-boy out to buy a handful of 
 buckshot, and, when he brought it, set about loading 
 both barrels of the fowling-piece that stood in my 
 office. While I was so occupied, my friend the 
 drug-clerk came in, and wanted to know what I was 
 up to. Shooting a dog, I said, and he laughed: — 
 
 '' Looks as though you were going gunning for 
 your beats." 
 
 I echoed his laugh thoughtlessly enough; but 
 the thing reminded me that it was unlawful to 
 shoot within the city limits, and I sent the boy up 
 to the station to tell the captain to never mind if 
 he heard shooting around: I was going out for a 
 dog. With that I went forth upon my quest. 
 
 The dog was there ; but he escaped before I 
 
142 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 could get a shot at him. He dodged, growHng and 
 snapping, among the weeds, and at last ran into a 
 large enclosed lot in which there were stacks of 
 lumber and junk and many hiding-places. I knew 
 that he could not get out, for the board fence was 
 high and tight. So I went in and shut the door 
 after me, and had him. 
 
 I should have said before that among my enemies 
 was a worthless fellow, a hanger-on of the local 
 political machine, who had that afternoon been in 
 the ofltice annoying me with his loud and boisterous 
 talk. He was drunk, and as there were some peo- 
 ple to see me, I put him out. He persisted in com- 
 ing back, and I finally told him, in the hearing of 
 a dozen persons, to go about his business, or some 
 serious harm would befall him. If I connected any 
 idea with it, it was to call a policeman ; but I left 
 them to infer something worse, I suppose. Getting 
 arrested was not very serious business with him. 
 He went out, swearing. 
 
 It was twilight when I began my still-hunt for 
 the spitz in the lumber lot, and the outlines of 
 things were more or less vague ; but I followed the 
 dog about until at last I made him out standing on 
 a pile of boards a little way off. It was my chance. 
 I raised the gun quickly and took aim. I had both 
 barrels cocked and my finger on the trigger, when 
 something told me quite distinctly not to shoot; to 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 143 
 
 put down the gun and go closer. I did so, and 
 found, not the dog as I thought, but my enemy 
 whom I had threatened but an hour or two before, 
 asleep at full length on the stack, with his coat 
 rolled under his head for a pillow. It was his white 
 shirt-bosom which I had mistaken in the twilight 
 for the spitz dog. 
 
 He never knew of his peril. I saw my own at a 
 glance, and it appalled me. Stranger that I was, 
 hated and denounced by many who would have 
 posed as victims of my violence ; with this record 
 against me of threatening the man whom I would 
 be accused of having slain an hour later; with my 
 two only friends compelled to give evidence which 
 would make me out as artfully plotting murder 
 under the shield of a palpable invention — for who 
 ever heard of any one notifying the police that he 
 was going to shoot a dog ? — with no family con- 
 nection or previous good character to build a de- 
 fence upon : where would have been my chance of 
 escape ? What stronger chain of circumstantial 
 evidence could have been woven to bring me, an 
 innocent man, to the gallows ? I have often wished 
 to forget that evening by the sleeping man in the 
 lumber lot. I cannot even now write calmly about 
 it. Many months passed before I could persuade 
 myself to touch my gun, fond as I had always been 
 of carrying it through the woods. 
 
144 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Of all this the beats knew nothing. They kept 
 up their warfare of backbiting and of raising petty 
 ructions at the office when I was not there, until I 
 hit upon the plan of putting Pat in charge. Pat 
 was a typical Irish coal-heaver, who would a sight 
 rather fight than eat. There was a coal office in 
 the building, and Pat was generally hanging around, 
 looking for a job. I paid him a dollar a week to 
 keep the office clear of intruders, and after that 
 there was no trouble. There was never any fight- 
 ing, either. The mere appearance of Pat in the 
 doorway was enough, to his great disgust. It was 
 a success as far as preserving the peace of the office 
 was concerned. But with it there grew up, un- 
 known to me, an impression that personally I would 
 not fight, and the courage of the beats rose corre- 
 spondingly. They determined to ambush me and 
 have it out with me. One wintry Saturday night, 
 when I was alone in the office closing up the busi- 
 ness of the week, they met on the opposite corner 
 to see me get a thrashing. One of their number, 
 a giant in stature, but the biggest coward of the 
 lot, was to administer it. He was fitted out with 
 an immense hickory club for the purpose, and to 
 nerve his arm they filled him with drink. 
 
 My office had a large window running the whole 
 length of the front, with a sill knee-high that made 
 a very good seat when chairs were scarce. Only, 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 145 
 
 one had to be careful not to lean against the win- 
 dow. It was made of small panes set in a slight 
 wooden framework, which every strong wind blew 
 out or in, and I was in constant dread lest the 
 whole thing should collapse. On that particular 
 night the window was covered with a heavy hoar- 
 frost, so that it was quite impossible to see from 
 outside what was going on within, or vice versa. 
 From my seat behind the desk I caught sight 
 through the door, as it was opened by a chance 
 caller, of the gang on the opposite corner, with 
 Jones and his hickory club, and knew what was 
 coming. I knew Jones, too, and awaited his debut 
 as a fighter with some curiosity. 
 
 He came over, bravely enough, after the fifth or 
 sixth drink, opened the door, and marched in with 
 the tread of a grenadier. But the moment it fell 
 to behind him, he stood and shook so that the club 
 fairly rattled on the floor. Outside the gang were 
 hugging their sides in expectation of what was 
 coming. 
 
 "Well, Jones," I said, "what is it? " 
 
 He mumbled something so tremulously and inco- 
 herently that I felt really sorry for him. Jones was 
 not a bad fellow, though he was in bad company 
 just then. I told him so, and that it would be best 
 for him to go out quietly, or he might hurt himself. 
 He seemed to be relieved at the suggestion, and 
 
146 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 when I went from behind the counter and led him 
 toward the door, he went willingly enough. But as 
 I put my hand on the latch he remembered his 
 errand, and, with a sudden plucking up of courage 
 at the thought of the waiting gang, he raised the 
 stick to strike at me. 
 
 Honestly, I didn't touch the man with a finger. 
 I suppose he stumbled over the sill, as I had some- 
 times done in my sober senses. Whatever the 
 cause, he fell agairist the window, and out with him 
 it went, the whole of the glass front, with a crash 
 that resounded from one end of the avenue to the 
 other, and brought neighbors and policemen, among 
 them my friend the captain, on a run to the store. 
 In the midst of the wreck lay Jones, moaning feebly 
 that his back was broken. The beats crowded 
 around with loud outcry. 
 
 " He threw him out of the window," they cried. 
 " We saw him do it ! Through window and all, 
 threw him bodily ! Did he not, Jones ? " 
 
 Jones, who was being picked up and carried into 
 my office, where they laid him on the counter while 
 they sent in haste for a doctor, nodded that it was 
 so. Probably he thought it was. I cannot even 
 blame the beats. It must have seemed to them that 
 I threw him out. They called upon the captain with 
 vehement demand to arrest me for murder. I looked 
 at him ; his face was serious. 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 147 
 
 " Why, I didn't touch him," I said indignantly. 
 " He must have fallen." 
 
 " Fallen ! " they shouted. " We saw him come 
 flying through. Fallen ! Look at the window ! " 
 And indeed it was a sorry sight. 
 
 Dr. Howe came with his instrument box, and the 
 crowd increased. The doctor was a young man who 
 had been very much amused by my battle with the 
 beats, and, though he professed no special friendship 
 for me, had no respect for the others. He felt the 
 groaning patient over, punched him here and there, 
 looked surprised, and felt again. Then he winked 
 one eye at the captain and me. 
 
 " Jones," he said, " get up ! There is nothing the 
 matter with you. Go and get sober." 
 
 The beats stood speechless. 
 
 " He came right through this window," they began. 
 " We saw him — " 
 
 " Something has come through the window, evi- 
 dently," said the captain, with asperity, " and broken 
 it. Who is to pay for it ? If you say it was Jones, 
 it is my duty to hold you as witnesses, if Mr. Riis 
 makes a charge of disorderly conduct against him, 
 as I suppose he will." He trod hard on my toe. 
 "A man cannot jump through another man's win- 
 dow like that. Here, let me — " 
 
 But they were gone. I never heard from them 
 again. But ever after the reputation clung to me 
 
148 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 of being a terrible fighter when roused. Jones 
 swore to it, drunk or sober. Twenty witnesses 
 backed him up. I was able to discharge Pat that 
 week. There was never an ill word in my street 
 after that. I suppose my renown as a scrapper sur- 
 vives yet in the old ward. As in the other case, the 
 chain of circumstantial evidence was perfect. No 
 link was missing. None could have been forged to 
 make it stronger. 
 
 I wouldn't hang a dog on such evidence. And I 
 think I am justified in taking that stand. 
 
 The summer and fall had worn away, and no 
 word had come from home. Mother, who knew, 
 gave no sign. Every day, when the letter-carrier 
 came up the street, my hopes rose high until he had 
 passed. The letter I longed for never came. It 
 was farthest from my thoughts when, one night in 
 the closing days of a hot political campaign, I went 
 to my office and found it lying there. I knew by 
 the throbbing of my heart what it was the instant I 
 saw it. I think I sat as much as a quarter of an 
 hour staring dumbly at the unopened envelope. 
 Then I arose slowly, like one grown suddenly old, 
 put it in my pocket, and stumbled homeward, walk- 
 ing as if in a dream. I went up to my room and 
 locked myself in. 
 
 It lies before me as I write, that blessed letter, the 
 first love-letter I had ever received ; much faded 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 
 
 149 
 
 and worn, and patched in many places to keep it 
 together. The queer row of foreign stamps cUmb- 
 ing over one another — she told me afterward that 
 
 -•"^^'^"■- — — ■*- 
 
 The Letter. 
 
 she had no idea how many were needed for a letter 
 to America, and was afraid to ask, so she put on 
 three times more than would have been enough — 
 and the address in her fair round hand, 
 
 Mr. Jacob A. Riis, 
 
 Editor South Brooklyn News, 
 
 Fifth Avenue cor. Ninth Street, 
 Brooklyn, N. Y., 
 North America, 
 
 the postmark of the little town of Hadersleben, 
 where she was teaching school, the old-fashioned 
 shape of the envelope — they all then and there 
 entered into my life and became part of it, to abide 
 
I50 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 forever with light and joy and thanksgiving. How 
 much of sunshine one httle letter can contain ! Six 
 years seemed all at once the merest breath of time 
 to have waited for it. Toil, hardship, trouble — 
 with that letter in my keep ? I laughed out loud at 
 the thought. The sound of my own voice sobered 
 me. I knelt down and prayed long and fervently 
 that I might strive with all my might to deserve the 
 great happiness that had come to me. 
 
 The stars were long out when my landlord, who 
 had heard my restless walk overhead, knocked to 
 ask if anything was the matter. He must have 
 seen it in my face when he opened the door, for he 
 took a sidelong step, shading his eyes from the 
 lamp to get a better look, and held out his hand. 
 
 " Wish you joy, old man," he said heartily. 
 " Tell us of it, will you ? " And I did. 
 
 It is true that all the world loves a lover.. It 
 smiled upon me all day long, and I smiled back. 
 Even the beats looked askance at me no longer. 
 The politicians who came offering to buy the 
 influence of my paper in the election were al- 
 lowed to escape with their lives. I wrote — I 
 think I wrote to her every day. At least that is 
 what I do now when I go away from home. She 
 laughs when she tells me that in the first letter I 
 spoke of coming home in a year. Meanwhile, ac- 
 cording to her wish, we were to say nothing about 
 
I BECOME AN EDITOR 151 
 
 it. In the second letter I decided upon the fol- 
 lowing spring. In the third I spoke of perhaps 
 going in the winter. The fourth and fifth pre- 
 ferred the early winter. The sixth reached her 
 from Hamburg, on the heels of a telegram announc- 
 ing that I had that day arrived in Frisia. 
 
 What had happened was that just at the right 
 moment the politicians had concluded, upon the evi- 
 dence of the recent elections, that they could not 
 allow an independent paper in the ward, and had 
 offered to buy it outright. I was dreadfully over- 
 worked. The doctor urged a change. I did not 
 need much urging. So I sold the "paper for five 
 times what I had paid for it, and took the first steamer 
 for home. Only the other day, when I was lectur- 
 ing in Chicago, a woman came up and asked if I 
 was the Riis she had travelled with on a Hamburg 
 steamer twenty-five years before, and who was going 
 home to be married. She had never forgotten how 
 happy he was. She and the rest of the passengers 
 held it to be their duty to warn me that " She " 
 might not turn out as nice as I thought she was. 
 
 " I guess we might have spared ourselves the 
 trouble," she said, looking me over. 
 
 Yes, they might. But I shall have to put off 
 telling of that till next time. And I shall let 
 Elizabeth, my Elizabeth now, tell her part of it in 
 her own way. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 
 
 How well I remember the days of which my 
 husband has written — our childhood in the old 
 Danish town where to this day, in spite of my love 
 for America, the air seems fresher, the meadows 
 greener, the sea more blue, and where above it all 
 the skylark sings his song clearer, softer, and 
 sweeter than anywhere else in the world ! I — it is 
 too bad that we cannot tell our own stories with- 
 out all the time talking about ourselves, but it is 
 so, and there is no help for it. Well, then, I was a 
 happy little girl in those days. Though my own 
 father, a county lawyer, had died early and left my 
 dear mother without any means of support for her- 
 self and three children except what she earned by 
 teaching school and music, it did not make life 
 harder for me, for I had been since I was three 
 years old with mother's youngest and loveliest 
 sister and her husband. They were rich and pros- 
 perous. They brought me up as their own, and 
 never had a child a kinder father and mother or a 
 more beautiful home than I had with my uncle and 
 
 152 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 
 
 153 
 
 aunt. Besides, I was naturally a happy child. 
 Life seemed full of sunshine, and every day 
 dawned with promise of joy and pleasure. I re- 
 member often saying to my aunt, whom, by the 
 way, I called mother, " I am 
 so happy I don't know what 
 to do ! " 
 
 So I skipped and danced 
 about among the lumber in 
 the sight of Jacob Riis, till, 
 in sheer amazement, he cut 
 his finger off. He says admi- 
 ration, not amazement, but I 
 have my own ideas about 
 that. I see him yet with his 
 arm in a sling and a defiant 
 look, making his way across 
 the hall at dancing-school to 
 engage me as his partner. I 
 did not appreciate the compliment in the least, for 
 I would a good deal rather have had Charles, who 
 danced well and was a much nicer looking bny. 
 Besides, Charles's sister Valgerda had told me in 
 confidence how Jacob had said to Charles that he 
 would marry me when I was a woman, or die. And 
 was there ever such assurance ? From the day I 
 learned of this, I treated Jacob with all the coolness 
 and contempt of which my naturally kindly disposi- 
 
 Elizabeth's Mother. 
 
154 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 tion was capable. When he spoke to me I answered 
 him hardly a word, and took pains to show my 
 preference for Charles or some other boy. But it 
 seemed to make no difference to him. 
 
 I was just seventeen when I received my first 
 love-letter from Jacob. Like the dutiful fellow he 
 was, he sent it through his mother, to my mother, 
 who read it before giving it to me. She handed it 
 to me with the words : " I need not tell you that 
 neither father nor I would ever give our consent to an 
 engagement between you two till Jacob had some 
 good position." Way down in my heart there was a 
 small voice whispering : " Well, if I loved him I 
 wouldn't ask anybody." But the letter was a beautiful 
 one, and after these many years I know that every 
 word in it was prompted by true, unselfish love. I 
 cried over it and answered it as best I could, and then 
 after a while forgot about it and was happy as ever 
 with my studies, my music, and plenty of dances 
 and parties to break the routine. Jacob had gone 
 away to America. 
 
 Before *I was twenty years old I met one who was 
 to have a great influence on my life. He was a 
 dashing cavalry officer, much older than I, and a 
 frequent visitor at our home. And here I must tell 
 that my own dear mother had died when I was fif- 
 teen years old, and my brother and sister had come 
 to live with us in Ribe. There was house-room and 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 
 
 155 
 
 heart-room for us all there. They were very good 
 to us, my uncle and aunt, and I loved them as if 
 they were indeed my parents. They spared no 
 expense in our bringing up. Nothing they gave 
 their only son was too good for us. Our home was 
 a very beautiful and happy one. 
 
 Elizabeth's Home — "The Castle." 
 
 It was in the summer of 1872 that I met Ray- 
 mond. That is not a Danish name, but it was his. 
 He came to our little town as next in command of a 
 company of gendarmes — mounted frontier police. 
 In the army he had served with my mother's brother, 
 and naturally father and mother, whose hospitable 
 
156 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 home welcomed every distinguished stranger, did 
 everything to make his existence, in what must to a 
 man of the world have been a dull little town, less 
 lonely than it would otherwise have been. He had 
 a good record, had been brave in the war, was the 
 finest horseman in all the country, could skate and 
 dance and talk, and, best of all, was known to be a 
 good and loving son to his widowed mother, and 
 greatly beloved by his comrades. So he came into 
 my life and singled me out before the other girls 
 at the balls and parties where we frequently met. 
 Strange as it may seem, for I was not a pretty girl, 
 I had many admirers among the young men in our 
 town. Perhaps there wasn't really any admiration 
 about it; perhaps it was just because we knew each 
 other as boys and girls and were brought up to- 
 gether. Most of the young men in our town were 
 college students who had gone to school in Ribe 
 and came back at vacation time to renew old friend- 
 ships and have a good time with old neighbors. I 
 danced well, played the piano well, and was full of 
 life, and they all liked to come in our house, where 
 there were plenty of good things of all kinds. So I 
 really ought not to say that I, who frequently cried 
 over the length of my nose, had admirers. I should 
 rather say good friends, who saw to it in their kind- 
 ness that I never was a wall-flower at a ball, or 
 lacked favors at a cotillon. 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 157 
 
 But he was so different. The others were young 
 like myself. He had experience. He was a man, 
 handsome and good, just such a man as would be 
 likely to take the fancy of a girl of my age. And 
 he, who had seen so many girls prettier and better 
 than I, singled me out of them all; and I — well, I 
 was proud of the distinction, and I loved him. 
 
 How well I remember the clear winter day when 
 he and I skated and talked, and talked and skated, 
 till the moon was high in the heavens, and my 
 brother was sent out to look for me ! I went home 
 that evening the happiest girl in the world, so I 
 thought ; for he had called me " a beautiful child," 
 and told me that he loved me. And father and 
 mother had given their consent to our engagement. 
 Never did the sun shine so brightly, never did the 
 bells ring out so clearly and appealingly in the old 
 Cathedral, and surely never was the world so beau- 
 tiful as on the Sunday morning after our engage- 
 ment when I awoke early in my dear little room. 
 Oh, how I loved the whole world and every one in 
 it ! how good God was, how kind and loving my 
 father and mother and brother and sisters ! How I 
 would love to be good to every one around me, and 
 thus in a measure show my gratitude for all the 
 happiness that was mine ! 
 
 So passed the winter and spring, with many prep- 
 arations for our new home and much planning for 
 
158 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 our future life. In a town like ours, where every- 
 body knew all about everybody else from the day 
 they were born till the day they died, it was only 
 reasonable to suppose that somebody had told my 
 betrothed about Jacob Riis's love for me. I had 
 hoped that Jacob would learn to look at me in a 
 different light, but from little messages which came 
 to me off and on from the New World, I knew that 
 he was just as faithful as ever to his idea that we 
 were meant for one another, and that " I might say 
 him No time and time again, the day would come 
 when I would change my mind." But in the first 
 happy days of our engagement I confess that I did 
 not think very much about him, except for mention- 
 ing him once or twice to my friend as a good fellow, 
 but such a queer and obstinate one, who some day 
 would see plainly that I was not half as good as he 
 thought, and learn to love some other girl who was 
 much better. 
 
 But one day there came a letter from America, 
 and so far was Jacob from my thoughts at that 
 moment that, when my lieutenant asked me from 
 whom did I think that American letter came, I 
 answered in perfect good faith that I could not 
 imagine, unless it were from a former servant of 
 ours who lived over there. 
 
 " No servant ever wrote that address," said Ray- 
 mond, dryly. It was from Jacob, and filled with 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 159 
 
 good wishes for us both. He Hstened to it ih 
 silence. I said how glad I was to find that at last 
 he looked upon me merely as a friend. " You lit- 
 tle know how to read between the lines," was his 
 sober comment. He was very serious, almost sad, 
 it seemed to me. 
 
 In the early summer came the first cloud on my 
 sunlit sky. One evening, when we were invited to 
 a party of young people at our doctor's house, word 
 was sent from Raymond that he was sick and could 
 not come, but that I must on no account stay 
 home. But I did. For me there was no pleasure 
 without him, no, not anywhere in the world. He 
 recovered soon, however; but after that, short 
 spells of illness, mostly heavy colds, were the rule. 
 He was a strong man and had taken pride in being 
 able to do things which few other men could do 
 without harm coming to them ; for instance, to 
 chop a hole in the ice and go swimming in mid- 
 winter. But exposure to the chill, damp air of that 
 North Sea country and the heavy fogs that drifted 
 in from the ocean at night, when he rode alone, 
 often many miles over the moor on his tours of 
 inspection, had undermined his splendid constitu- 
 tion, and before the summer was over the doctors 
 pronounced my dear one a sufferer from bronchial 
 consumption, and told us that his only chance lay 
 in his seeking a milder climate. I grieved at the 
 
l6o THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 thought of separation for a whole winter, perhaps 
 longer, and at his suffering ; but I felt sure that he 
 would come back to me from Switzerland a well 
 man. 
 
 So we parted. That winter we lived in our let- 
 ters. The fine climate in Montreux seemed to do 
 him good, and his messages were full of hope that 
 all would be well. Not so with my parents. "They 
 had been told by physicians who had treated Ray- 
 mond that his case was hopeless ; that he might 
 live years, perhaps, in Switzerland, but that in all 
 probability to return to Denmark would be fatal to 
 him. They told me so, and I could not, would not, 
 believe them. It seemed impossible that God would 
 take him away from me. They also told me that 
 on no condition must I think of marrying him, 
 because either I should be a widow soon after mar- 
 riage, or else I should be a sick-nurse for several 
 years. So they wished me to break the engage- 
 ment while he was absent. 
 
 This and much more was said to me. And I, 
 who had always been an obedient daughter and 
 never crossed their will in any way, for the first time 
 in my life opposed them and told them that never 
 should anybody separate me from the one I loved 
 until God himself parted us. Mother reminded me 
 of my happy childhood, and of how much she and 
 my foster-father had done for me, and that now 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY l6l 
 
 they had only my happiness in view — a fact which 
 I might not understand till I was older, she said, 
 but must now take on trust. Beside which, Ray- 
 mond would be made to feel as if a load were taken 
 off his mind if of my free will I broke our engage- 
 ment and left him free from any responsibility 
 toward me. But all the time his letters told me 
 that he loved me better than ever, and I lived only 
 in the hope of his home-coming. So I refused to 
 listen to them. They wrote to him ; told him what 
 the doctor said and appealed to him to set me free. 
 And he, loyal and good as he was, gave me back 
 my promise. He believed he would get well. But 
 he knew he could not return to Ribe. He had 
 resigned his command and gone back to the rank 
 and pay of a plain lieutenant. He could not offer 
 me now such a home as I was used to these many 
 years ; and as he was so much older than I, he 
 thought it his duty to tell me all this. And all the 
 time he knew, oh, so well ! that I would never leave 
 him, come what might, sickness, poverty, or death 
 itself. I was bound to stand by him to the last. 
 That was a hard winter. Father and mother, 
 who could not look into my heart and see that I 
 still loved them as dearly as ever — I know so well 
 they meant it all for the best — called me ungrateful 
 and told me that I was blind and would not see 
 what made for my good, and that therefore they 
 
1 62 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 must take their own measures for my happiness. 
 So they offered me the choice between giving up 
 the one I loved or leaving the home that had been 
 mine so long. I chose the last, for I could not do 
 otherwise. I packed my clothes and said good-by 
 to my friends, of whom many treated me with cold- 
 ness, since they, too, thought I must be ungrateful 
 to those who had done so much for me. Homeless 
 and alone I went to Raymond's brother, who had a 
 little country home near the city of Copenhagen. 
 With him and his young wife I stayed until one day 
 my Raymond returned, much better apparently, yet 
 not the same as before. Suffering, bodily and men- 
 tal, had left its traces upon his face and frame, but 
 his love for me was greater than ever, and he tried 
 hard to make up to me all I lost ; as if I had really 
 lost anything in choosing him before all the world. 
 
 We were very happy at first in the joy of being 
 together. But soon he suffered a relapse, and 
 decided to go to the hospital for treatment. He 
 never left it again, except once or twice for a walk 
 with me. All the long, beautiful summer days he 
 spent in his room, the last few months in bed. 
 Many friends came to see him, and as for me, I 
 spent all my days with him, reading softly to him 
 or talking with him. And I never gave up hope 
 of his getting better some day. He probably knew 
 that his time was short, but I think that he did not 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 163 
 
 have the heart to tell me. Sometimes he would 
 say, " I wonder whether your people would take 
 you back to your home if I died." Or, " If I 
 should die, and some other man who loved you, 
 and who you knew was good and faithful, should 
 ask you to marry him, you ought to accept him, 
 even if you did not love him." I never could bear 
 to hear it or to think of it then. 
 
 One raw, dark November morning I started on 
 the long walk from his mother's house, where I 
 had stayed since he took to his bed, to go and 
 spend the day with him as usual. By this time I 
 was well acquainted with every one in the hospital. 
 The nurses were good to me. They took off my 
 shoes and dried and warmed them for me, and 
 some brought me afternoon coffee, which other- 
 wise was contraband in the sick-rooms. But this 
 morning the nurse in charge of Raymond's ward 
 turned her back upon me and pretended not to 
 hear me when I bid her good-morning. When I 
 entered his room, it was to find the lifeless body of 
 him who only a few hours before had bidden me a 
 loving and even cheerful good-night. 
 
 Oh ! the utter loneliness of those days ; the long- 
 ing for mother and home ! But no word came from 
 Ribe then. My dear one was laid to rest, with the 
 sweet, resigned smile on his brave face, and I 
 stayed for a while with his people, not being quite 
 
164 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 able to look into the future. My father had mean- 
 while made provision for me at Copenhagen. When 
 I was able to think clearly, I went to the school 
 in which my education had been " finished " in the 
 happy, careless days, and through its managers 
 
 secured a position in Baron von D 's house, 
 
 not far from my old home, but in the province that 
 
 was taken from Denmark 
 by Germany the winter I 
 played in the lumber-yard. 
 My employers were kind 
 to- me, and my three girl 
 pupils soon were the firm 
 friends of the quiet little 
 governess with the sad face. 
 We worked hard together. 
 
 Elizabeth as I found her again. 
 
 to forget if I could. But 
 
 each day I turned my face 
 to the west toward Ribe, 
 and my heart cried out for my happy childhood. 
 
 At last mother sent for me to come to them in 
 the summer vacation. Oh, how good it was to go 
 home again ! How nice they all were, and what 
 quiet content I felt, though I knew I should never 
 forget ! The six weeks went by like a dream. On 
 the last day, as I was leaving, mother gave me a 
 letter from Jacob Riis, of whom I had not thought 
 for a long while. It was a letter of proposal, and I 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 165 
 
 was angry. I answered it, however, as nicely as I 
 could, and sent the letter to his mothei". Then 
 I returned to my three pupils in their pleasant 
 country home, and soon we were busy with our 
 studies and our walks. But I felt lonelier than 
 ever, longed more than ever for the days that had 
 been and would never return. I could not sleep, 
 and grew pale and thin. And ever Raymond's 
 words about a friend, good and faithful, who loved 
 me truly, came back to me. Did he mean Jacob, 
 who had surely proved constant, and like me, had 
 suffered much ? He was lonely and I was lonely, 
 oh ! so lonely ! What if I were to accept his offer, 
 and when he came home go back with him to his 
 strange new country to share his busy life, and in 
 trying to make him happy, perhaps find happiness 
 myself? Unless I asked him to come, he would 
 probably never return. The thought of how glad 
 it would make his parents if they could see him 
 again, now that they had buried two fine sons, 
 almost tempted me. 
 
 Yet again, it was too soon, too soon. I banished 
 the thought with angry impatience. But in the 
 still night watches it came and knocked again. 
 Jacob need not come home just now. We might 
 write and get acquainted, and get used to the idea 
 of each other, and his old people could look forward 
 to the joy of having him return in a year or two. 
 
1 66 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 At last, one night, I got up at two o'clock, sat 
 down at my desk, and wrote to him in perfect sin- 
 cerity all that was in my mind concerning him, and 
 that if he still would have me, I was willing to go 
 with him to America if he would come for me some 
 time. Strange to say, Jacob's mother had never 
 sent the letter in which I refused him a second 
 time. Perhaps she thought his constancy and 
 great love would at last touch my heart, longing 
 as it was for somebody to cling to. So that he 
 got my last letter first. But instead of waiting 
 several years, he came in a few weeks. He was 
 always that way. 
 
 And now, after twenty-five happy years 
 
 Elisabeth.^ 
 
 I cut the rest of it off, because I am the editor 
 and want to begin again here myself, and what is 
 the use of being an editor unless you can cut 
 " copy " ? Also, it is not good for woman to 
 allow her to say too much. She has already said 
 too much about that letter. I have got it in my 
 pocket, and I guess I ought to know. " Your own 
 Elisabeth " — was not that enough .? For him, with 
 his poor, saddened life, peace be to its memory ! He 
 loved her. That covers all. How could he help it? 
 
 ^ That is right. Up to this the printer has liad his way. Now we 
 will have ours, she and I, and spell her name properly. Together we 
 shall manage him. 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 167 
 
 If they did not think I had lost my senses before, 
 they assuredly did when that telegram reached 
 Ribe. Talk about the privacy of the mails (the 
 telegraph is part of the post-office machinery there), 
 official propriety, and all that — why, I don't sup- 
 pose that telegraph operator could get his coat on 
 quick enough to go out and tell the amazing news. 
 It would not have been human nature, certainly 
 not Ribe human nature. Before sundown it was 
 all over town that Jacob Riis was coming home, 
 and coming for Elisabeth. Poor girl ! It was in 
 the Christmas holidays, and she was visiting there. 
 She had been debating in her own mind whether 
 to tell her mother, and how ; but they left her 
 precious little time for debate. In a neighborhood 
 gathering that night one stern, uncompromising 
 dowager transfixed her with avenging eye. 
 
 "They say Jacob Riis is coming home," she ob- 
 served. Elisabeth knitted away furiously, her cheeks 
 turning pink for all she made believe she did not 
 hear. 
 
 " They say he is coming back to propose to a cer- 
 tain young lady again," continued the dowager, piti- 
 lessly, her voice rising. There was the stillness of 
 death in the room. Elisabeth dropped a stitch, tried 
 to pick it up, failed, and fled. Her mother from 
 her seat observed with never-failing dignity that it 
 blew like to bring on a flood. You could almost 
 
1 68 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 hear the big cathedral bell singing in the tower. 
 And the subject was changed. 
 
 But I will warrant that Ribe got no wink of sleep 
 that night, the while I fumed in a wayside Holstein 
 inn. In my wild rush to get home I had taken the 
 wrong train from Hamburg, or forgot to change, or 
 something. I don't to this day know what. I know 
 that night coming on found me stranded in a little 
 town I had never heard of, on a spur of the road 
 I didn't know existed, and there I had to stay, rag- 
 ing at the railroad, at the inn, at everything. In 
 the middle of the night, while I was tossing sleep- 
 less on the big four-poster bed, a drunken man who 
 had gone wrong fell into my room with the door 
 and a candle. That man was my friend. I got up 
 and kicked him out, called the landlord and blew 
 him up, and felt much better. The sun had not 
 risen when I was posting back to the junction, 
 counting the mile-posts as we sped, watch in hand. 
 
 If mother thought we had all gone mad together, 
 there was certainly something to excuse her. Here 
 she had only a few weeks before forwarded with a 
 heavy heart to her son in America Elisabeth's flat 
 refusal to hear him, and when she expected gloom 
 and despair, all at once his letters overflowed with 
 a hysterical happiness that could only hail from a 
 disordered mind. To cap it all, Christmas Eve 
 brought her the shock of her life. Elisabeth, sit- 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 169 
 
 ting near her in the old church and remorsefully 
 watching her weep for her buried boys, could not 
 resist the impulse to steal up behind, as they were 
 going out, and whisper into her ear, as she gave 
 her a little vicarious hug : " I have had news from 
 Jacob. He is very happy." The look of measure- 
 less astonishment on my mother's face, as she 
 turned, recalled to her that she could not know, 
 and she hurried away, while mother stood and 
 looked after her, for the first time in her hfe, I verily 
 believe, thinking hard things of a fellow-being — 
 and of her ! Oh, mother ! could you but have 
 known that that hug was for your boy ! 
 
 Counting hours no longer, but minutes, till I 
 should claim it myself, I sat straining my eyes in 
 the dark for the first glimmer of lights in the old 
 town, when my train pulled up at a station a dozen 
 miles from home. The guard ran along and threw 
 open the doors of the compartments. I heard voices 
 and the cry: — 
 
 " This way, Herr Doctor ! There is room in here," 
 and upon the step loomed the tall form of our old 
 family physician. As I started up with a cry of 
 recognition, he settled into a seat with a contented — 
 
 " Here, Overlaerer, is one for you," and I was 
 face to face with my father, grown very old and 
 white. My heart smote me at the sight of his ven- 
 erable head. 
 
170 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 "I was face to face with my father.' 
 
 " Father ! " I cried, and reached out for him. I 
 think he thought he saw a ghost. He stood quite 
 still, steadying himself against the door, and his 
 face grew very . pale. It was the doctor, ever the 
 most jovial of men, who first recovered himself. 
 
 " Bless my soul ! " he cried, " bless my soul if here 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 171 
 
 is not Jacob, come back from the wilds as large as 
 life ! Welcome home, boy ! " and we laughed and 
 shook hands. They had been out to see a friend 
 in the country and had happened upon my train. 
 
 At the door of our house, father, who had picked up 
 two of my brothers at the depot, halted and thought. 
 
 " Better let me go in first," he said, and, being a 
 small man, put the door of the dining-room between 
 me and mother, so that she could not see me right 
 away. 
 
 "What do you think — " he began, but his voice 
 shook so that mother rose to her feet at once. How 
 do mothers know ? 
 
 " Jacob ! " she cried, and, pushing past him, had 
 me in her embrace. 
 
 That was a happy tea-table. If mother's tears fell 
 as she told of my brothers, the sting was taken out 
 of her grief. Perhaps it was never there. To her 
 there is no death of her dear ones, but rejoicing in 
 the midst of human sorrow that they have gone 
 home where she shall find them again. If ever a 
 doubt had arisen in my mind of that home, how 
 could it linger ? How could I betray my mother's 
 faith, or question it ? 
 
 Perfectly happy were we ; but when the tea-things 
 were removed and I began to look restlessly at my 
 watch and talk of an errand I must go, a shadow of 
 anxiety came into my father's eyes. Mother looked 
 
172 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 at me with mute appeal. They were still as far 
 from the truth as ever. A wild notion that I had 
 come for some other man's daughter had entered 
 their minds, or else, God help me, that I had lost 
 mine. I kissed mother and quieted her fears. 
 
 " I will tell you when I come back ; " and when 
 she would have sent my brothers with me : " No ! 
 this walk I must take alone. Thank God for it." 
 
 So I went over the river, over the Long Bridge 
 where I first met Her, and from the arch of which 
 I hailed the light in her window, the beacon that 
 had beckoned me all the years while two oceans 
 surged between us ; under the wild-rose hedge 
 where I had dreamed of her as a boy, and presently 
 I stood upon the broad stone steps of her father's 
 house,- and rang the bell. 
 
 An old servant opened the door, and, with a grave 
 nod of recognition, showed me into the room to the 
 left, — the very one where I had taken leave of her 
 six years before, — then went unasked to call " Miss 
 Elisabeth." It was New Year's Eve, and they were 
 having a card party in the parlor. 
 
 " Oh, it isn't — ? " said she, with her heart in her 
 mouth, pausing on the threshold and looking appeal- 
 ingly at the maid. It was the same who years be- 
 fore had told her how I kept vigil under her window. 
 
 " Yes ! it is ! " she said, mercilessly, " it's him," 
 and she pushed her in. 
 
/ 
 
Bringing the "Loved-up" Flowers. 
 
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY 173 
 
 I think it was I who spoke first. 
 
 " Do you remember when the ice broke on the 
 big ditch and I had you in my arms, so, Ufting you 
 over r 
 
 " Was I heavy ? " she asked, irrelevantly, and we 
 both laughed. 
 
 Father's reading-lamp shone upon the open Bible 
 when I returned. He wiped his spectacles and 
 looked up with a patiently questioning " Well, my 
 boy ? " Mother laid her hand upon mine. 
 
 " I came home," I said unsteadily, " to give you 
 Elisabeth for a daughter. She has promised to be 
 my wife." 
 
 Mother clung to me and wept. Father turned 
 the leaves of the book with hands that trembled in 
 spite of himself, and read : — 
 
 " Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy 
 name give glory for thy mercy — " 
 
 His voice faltered and broke. 
 
 The old town turned out, to the last man and 
 woman, and crowded the Domkirke on that March 
 day, twenty-five years ago when I bore Her home 
 my bride. From earliest morning the street that 
 led to " the Castle " had seen a strange procession 
 of poor and aged women pass, carrying flowers 
 grown in window-gardens in the scant sunlight of 
 the long Northern winter — "loved up," they say 
 
174 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 in Danish for " grown " ; in no other way could it 
 be done. They were pensioners on her mother's 
 bounty, bringing their gifts to the friend who was 
 going away. And it was their flowers she wore when 
 I led her down the church aisle my wife, my own. 
 
 The Castle opened its doors hospitably at last to 
 the carpenter's lad. When they fell to behind us, 
 with father, mother, and friends waving tearful 
 good-bys from the steps, and the wheels of the mail- 
 
 " Out into the open country, into the wide world, — our life's journey 
 had begun." 
 
 coach rattled over the cobblestones of the silent 
 streets where old neighbors had set lights in their 
 windows to cheer us on the way, — out into the open 
 country, into the wide world, — our life's journey 
 had begun. Looking steadfastly ahead, over the 
 bleak moor into the unknown beyond, I knew in 
 my soul that I should conquer. For her head was 
 leaning trustfully on my shoulder and her hand was 
 in mine ; and all was well. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EARLY MARRIED LIFE ; I BECOME AN ADVERTISING 
 
 bureau; on THE "tribune" 
 
 It was no easy life to which I brought home my 
 young wife. I felt it often with a secret pang when 
 I thought how few friends I had to offer her for 
 those she had left, and how very different was the 
 whole setting of her new home. At such times I 
 set my teeth hard and promised myself that some 
 day she should have the best in the land. She 
 never with word or look betrayed if she, too, felt the 
 pang. We were comrades for better or worse from 
 the day she put her hand in mine, and never was 
 there a more loyal and faithful one. If, when in 
 the twilight she played softly to herself the old airs 
 from home, the tune was smothered in a sob that was 
 not for my ear, and shortly our kitchen resounded 
 with the most tremendously energetic housekeeping 
 on record, I did not hear. I had drunk that cup to 
 the dregs, and I knew. I just put on a gingham 
 apron and turned in to help her. Two can battle 
 with a fit of homesickness much better than one, 
 even if never a word is said about it. And it can very 
 
 17s 
 
176 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 rarely resist a man with an apron on. I suppose 
 he looks too ridiculous. 
 
 Besides, housekeeping in double harness was a 
 vastly different matter from going it single. Not 
 that it was plain sailing by any manner of means. 
 Neither of us knew anything about it ; but we were 
 there to find out, and exploring together was fine 
 fun. We started fair by laying in a stock of every- 
 thing there was in the cook-book and in the grocery, 
 from " mace," which neither of us knew what was, 
 to the prunes which we never got a chance to cook 
 because we ate them all up together before we could 
 find a place where they fitted in. The deep councils 
 we held over the disposal of those things, and the 
 strange results which followed sometimes ! Certain 
 rocks we were able to steer clear of, because I had 
 carefully charted them in the days of my bachelor- 
 hood. In the matter of sago, for instance, which 
 swells so when cooked. You would never believe 
 it. But there were plenty of unknown reefs. I 
 mind our first chicken. I cannot to this day im- 
 agine what was the matter with that strange bird. 
 I was compelled to be at the office that afternoon, 
 but I sent my grinning " devil " up to the house 
 every half-hour for bulletins as to how it was get- 
 ting on. When I came home in the gloaming, it 
 was sizzling yet, and my wife was regarding it with 
 a strained look and with cheeks which the fire had 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 177 
 
 dyed a most lovely red. I can see her now. She 
 was just too charming for anything. With the 
 chicken something was wrong. As I said, I don't 
 know what it was, and I don't care. The skin was 
 all drawn tight over the bones like the covering on 
 an umbrella frame, and there was no end of fat in 
 the pan that we didn't know what to do with. But 
 our supper of bread and cheese that night was a 
 meal fit for a king. My mother, who was a notable 
 cook, never made one so fine. It is all stuff about 
 mothers doing those things better. Who cares, any- 
 how ? Have mothers curls of gold and long eye- 
 lashes, and have they arch ways ? And do they 
 pout, and have pet names ? Well, then, are not 
 these of the very essence of cookery, all the dry 
 books to the contrary notwithstanding? Some 
 day some one will publish a real cook-book for 
 young housekeepers, but it will be a wise husband 
 with the proper sense of things, not a motherly 
 person at all, who will write it. They make things 
 that are good enough to eat, but that is not the best 
 part of cooking by long odds. 
 
 There is one housekeeping feat of which Elisa- 
 beth says she is ashamed yet. I am not. I'll bet it 
 was fine. It was that cake we took so much trouble 
 with. The yeast went in all right, but something 
 else went wrong. It was not put to soak, or to 
 sizzle, in the oven, or whatever it was. Like my 
 
178 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 single-blessed pancake, it did not rise, and in the 
 darkness before I came home she smuggled it out of 
 the house ; only to behold, with a mortification that 
 endures to this day, the neighbor-woman who had 
 taken such an interest in our young housekeeping, 
 examining it carefully in the ash-barrel next morn- 
 ing. People are curious. But they were w^elcome 
 to all they could spy out concerning our household. 
 They discovered there, if they looked right, the 
 sweetest and altogether the bravest little house- 
 keeper in all the world. And what does a cake 
 matter, or a hen, or twenty, when only the house- 
 keeper is right ? 
 
 In my editorial enthusiasm for the new plan there 
 was no doubtful note. The " beats " got a rest for 
 a season while I transferred my attention to the 
 boarding-house. My wife teases me yet with those 
 mighty onslaughts on the new enemy. Having 
 clearly made him out by the light of our evening 
 lamp, I went for him with might and main, de- 
 termined to leave no boarding-house through the 
 length and breadth of the land, or at least of South 
 Brooklyn. " Ours," I cried, weekly " to fulfil its 
 destiny, must be a nation of homes. Down with 
 the boarding-house!" and .the politicians applauded. 
 They were glad to be let alone. So were the beats 
 who were behind in their bills, and whose champion 
 I had unexpectedly become. A doughty champion, 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 1 79 
 
 too, a walking advertisement of my own prescrip- 
 tion ; for I grew fat and strong, whereas I had been 
 lean and poor. I was happy, that was it ; very, very 
 happy, and full of faith in our ability to fight our 
 way through, come what might. Nor did it require 
 the gift of a prophet to make out that trying days 
 were coming; for my position, again as the paid 
 editor of my once " owners," the politicians, was 
 rapidly becoming untenable. It was an agreement 
 entered into temporarily. When it should lapse, 
 what then ? I had pledged myself when I sold the 
 paper not to start another for ten years in South 
 Brooklyn. So I would have to begin life over again 
 in a new place. I gave the matter but little thought. 
 I suppose the old folks, viewing it all from over 
 there, thought it trifling with fate. It was not. It 
 was a trumpet challenge to it to come on, all that 
 could crowd in. Two, we would beat the world. 
 
 Before I record the onset that ensued, I must stop 
 to tell of another fight, one which in my soul I 
 regret, though it makes me laugh even now. Non- 
 resistance never appealed to me except in the evil- 
 doer who has been knocked down for cause. I 
 suppose it is wicked, but I promised to tell the truth, 
 and — I always did like Peter for knocking off the 
 ear of the high priest's servant. If only it had 
 been the high priest's own ear ! And so when the 
 Rev. Mr. — no, I will not mention names; he was 
 
l8o THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Brother Simmons's successor, that is what grieves 
 me — when he found fault with the News for being 
 on sale Sundays, if I remember rightly, and preached 
 about it, announcing that " never in the most anx- 
 ious days of the war had he looked in a newspaper 
 on the Sabbath " ; and when ill luck would have it 
 that on the same Sunday I beheld his Reverence, 
 who was a choleric man, hotly stoning a neighbor's 
 hen from his garden, I drew editorial parallels which 
 were not soothing to the reverend temper. What 
 
 really ailed Mr. was that he was lacking in 
 
 common sense, or he would never have called upon 
 me with his whole board of deacons in the quiet of 
 the Sunday noon, right after church, to demand a 
 retraction. I have no hope that a sense of the 
 humor of the thing found its way into the clerical 
 consciousness when I replied that I never in the 
 most exciting times transacted business on Sunday; 
 for if it had, we would have been friends for life. 
 But I know that it " struck in " in the case of the 
 deacons. They went out struggling with their mirth 
 behind their pastor's back. I think he restrained 
 himself with difficulty from pronouncing the major 
 excommunication against me, with bell, book, and 
 candle, then and there. 
 
 About that time I saw advertised for sale a stere- 
 opticon outfit, and bought it without any definite 
 idea of what to do with it. I suppose it ought to be 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE i8l 
 
 set down as foolishness and a waste of money. And 
 yet it was to play an important part in the real life- 
 work that was waiting for me. Without the knowl- 
 edge which the possession of it gave me, that work 
 could not have been carried out as it was. That is 
 not to say that I recommend every man to have a 
 magic lantern in his cellar, or the promiscuous pur- 
 chase of all sorts of useless things as though the 
 world were a kind of providential rummage sale. I 
 should rather say that no effort to in any way add to 
 one's stock of knowledge is likely to come amiss in 
 this world of changes and emergencies, and that 
 Providence has a way of ranging itself on the side 
 of the man with the strongest battalions of resources 
 when the emergency does come. In other words, 
 that to "trust God and keep your powder dry "' is 
 the plan for all time. 
 
 The process of keeping mine dry came near blow- 
 ing up the house. My two friends, Mackellar and 
 Wells, took a sympathetic interest in the lantern 
 proceedings, which was well, because, being a drug- 
 gist. Wells knew about making the gas and could 
 prevent trouble on that tack. It was before the 
 day of charged tanks. The gas we made was con- 
 tained in wedge-shaped rubber bags, in a frame with 
 weights on top that gave -the necessary pressure. 
 Mackellar volunteered to be the weight, and sat on 
 the bags, at our first seance, while Wells superin- 
 
1 82 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 tended the gas and I read the written directions. 
 We were getting along nicely when I came to a 
 place enjoining great caution in the distribution of 
 the weight. " You are working," read the text, 
 " with two gases which, if allowed to mix in undue 
 proportion, have the force and all the destructive 
 power of a bombshell." Mackellar, all ear, from 
 fidgeting fell into a tremble on his perch. He had 
 not dreamed of this; neither had we. I steadied 
 him with an imperative gesture. 
 
 " Sit still," I commanded. " Listen ! ' If, by any 
 wabbling of the rack, the pressure were to be sud- 
 denly relieved, the gas from one bag might be 
 sucked into the other, with the result of a disastrous 
 explosion.' " 
 
 We stood regarding each other in dumb horror. 
 Mackellar was deathly pale. 
 
 " Let me off, boys," he pleaded faintly. " I've got 
 to go to the station to turn out the men." He made 
 a motion to climb down. 
 
 Wells had snatched the book from me. " Jack ! 
 for your life don't move ! " he cried, and pointed to 
 the next paragraph in the directions : — 
 
 " Such a thing has happened when the frame has 
 been upset, or the weight in some other way sud- 
 denly shifted." 
 
 Mac sat as if frozen to stone. Ed and I sneaked 
 out of the back door on tiptoe to make for down- 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 183 
 
 stairs, three steps at a time. In less time than it 
 takes to tell it we were back, each with an armful of 
 paving-stones, which we piled up beside our ago- 
 nized comrade, assuring him volubly that there was 
 no danger if he would only sit still, still as a mouse, 
 till we came back. Then we were off again. The 
 third trip gave us stones enough, and with infinite 
 care we piled them, one after another, upon the rack 
 as the Captain eased up, until at last he stood upon 
 the floor, a freed and saved man. It was only then 
 that it occurred to us that we might have turned off 
 the gas in the first place, and so saved ourselves all 
 our anguish and toil. 
 
 I can say honestly that I tried the best I knew 
 how to get along with the politicians I served, but 
 in the long run it simply could not be done. They 
 treated me fairly, bearing no grudges. But it is one 
 thing to run an independent newspaper, quite an- 
 other to edit an " organ." And there is no deceiving 
 the public. Not that I tried. Indeed, if anything, 
 the shoe was on the other foot. We parted com- 
 pany eventually to our mutual relief, and qu'te 
 unexpectedly I found my lantern turning the bread- 
 winner of the family. The notion of using it as a 
 means of advertising had long allured me. There 
 was a large population out on Long Island that 
 traded in Brooklyn stores and could be reached in 
 that way. In fact, it proved to be so. I made 
 
1 84 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 money that fall travelling through the towns and vil- 
 lages and giving open-air exhibitions in v^hich the 
 " ads " of Brooklyn merchants vs^ere cunningly inter- 
 larded vi^ith very beautiful colored views, of which I 
 had a fine collection. When the season was too far 
 advanced to allow of this, I established myself in a 
 window at Myrtle Avenue and Fulton Street and 
 appealed to the city crowds with my pictures. So 
 I filled in a gap of several months, while our people 
 on the other side crossed themselves at my having 
 turned street fakir. At least we got that impression 
 from their letters. They were not to blame. That 
 is their way of looking at things. A chief reason 
 why I liked this country from the very beginning was 
 that it made no difference what a man was doing, so 
 long as it was some honest, decent work. I liked 
 my advertising scheme. I advertised .nothing I 
 would not have sold the people myself, and I gave 
 it to them in a way that was distinctly pleasing and 
 good for them ; for my pictures were real work of 
 art, not the cheap trash you see nowadays on street 
 screens. 
 
 The city crowds were always appreciative. In 
 the country the hoodlums made trouble occasionally. 
 We talk a great deal about city toughs. In nine 
 cases out of ten they are lads of normal impulses 
 whose resources have all been smothered by the 
 slum ; of whom the street and its lawlessness, and 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 185 
 
 the tenement that is without a home, have made 
 ruffians. With better opportunities they might 
 have been heroes. The country hoodlum is oftener 
 what he is because his bent is that way, though he, 
 too, is not rarely driven into mischief by the utter 
 poverty — aesthetically I mean — of his environment. 
 Hence he shows off in his isolation so much worse 
 than his city brother. It is no argument for the 
 slum. It makes toughs, whereas the other is one 
 in spite of his country home. That is to say, if the 
 latter is really a home. There is only one cure 
 then — an almighty thrashing. 
 
 There ought to be some ex-hoodlums left in Flush- 
 ing to echo that sentiment, even after a quarter of a 
 century. From certain signs I knew, when I hung 
 my curtain -between two trees in the little public 
 park downn^y the fountain with the goldfish, that 
 there was going to be trouble. My patience had 
 been pretty well worn down, and I made prepara- 
 tions. I hired four stout men who were spoiling for 
 a fight, and put good hickory clubs into their hands, 
 bidding them restrain their natural desire to use 
 them till the time came. My forebodings were not 
 vain. Potatoes, turnips, and eggs flew, not only at 
 the curtain, ,but at the lantern and me. I stood it 
 until the Castle of Heidelberg, which was one of my 
 most beautiful colored views, was rent in twain by a 
 rock that went clear through the curtain. Then I 
 
l86 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 gave the word. In a trice the apparatus was 
 gathered up and thrown into a wagon that was wait- 
 ing, the horses headed for Jamaica. We made one 
 dash into the crowd, and a wail arose from the 
 bruised and bleeding hoodlums that hung over the 
 town like a nightmare, while we galloped out of it, 
 followed by cries of rage and a mob with rocks and 
 clubs. But we had the best team in town, and soon 
 lost them. 
 
 Vengeance ? No ! Of course there was the 
 ruined curtain and those eggs to be settled for ; but, 
 on the whole, I think we were a kind of village 
 improvement society for the occasion, though we 
 did not stay to wait for a vote of thanks. I am sure 
 it was our due all the same. 
 
 Along in the summer of 1877 Wells and I hatched 
 out a scheme of country advertising on a larger 
 scale, of which the lantern was to be the vehicle. 
 We were to publish a directory of the city of Elmira. 
 How we came to select that city I have forgotten, 
 but the upshot of that latest of my business ven- 
 tures I am not likely to forget soon. Our plan was 
 to boom the advertising end of the enterprise by a 
 nightly street display in the interest of our patrons. 
 We had barely got into town when the railroad 
 strikes of that memorable summer reached Elmira. 
 There had been dreadful trouble, fire and bloodshed, 
 in Pennsylvania, and the citizens took steps at once 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 1 87 
 
 to preserve the peace. A regiment of deputy- 
 sheriffs were sworn in, and the town was put under 
 semi-martial law. Indeed, soldiers with fixed bayo- 
 nets guarded every train and car that went over the 
 bridge between the business section of the town 
 and the railroad shops across the Chemung River. 
 
 Our ill luck — or good ; when a thing comes upon 
 you so unexpectedly as did that, I am rather dis- 
 posed to consider it a stroke of good fortune, how- 
 ever disguised — would have it that the building we 
 had chosen to hang our curtain on was right at the 
 end of this bridge which seemed to be the danger 
 point. From the other end the strikers looked 
 across the river, hourly expected to make a move- 
 ment of some kind, exactly what I don't know. I 
 know that the whole city was on pins and needles 
 about it, while we, all unconscious that we were the 
 object of sharp scrutiny, were vainly trying to string 
 our sixteen-foot curtain. There was a high wind 
 that blew it out over the river despite all our efforts 
 to catch and hold it. Twice it escaped our grasp. 
 We could see a crowd of strikers watching us on 
 the other side. The deputies who held our end of 
 the bridge saw them too. We were strangers ; came 
 from no one knew where. They must have con- 
 cluded that .we were in league with the enemy and 
 signalling to him. When for the third time our big 
 white flag was wafted toward the shops, a committee 
 
1 88 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 of citizens came up from the street and let us know 
 in as few words as possible that any other place 
 would be healthier for us just then than Elmira. 
 In vain we protested that we were noncora- 
 batants and engaged in peaceful industry. The 
 committee pointed to the flag and to the crowd at 
 the farther end of the bridge. They eyed our 
 preparations for making gas askance, and politely 
 but firmly insisted that the next train out of town 
 was especially suited for our purpose. There was 
 nothing to be done. It was another case of cir- 
 cumstantial evidence, and in the absence of backing 
 of any kind we did the only thing we could ; packed 
 up and went. It was not a time for trifling. The 
 slaughter of a number of militiamen in a Pennsyl- 
 vania round-house that was set on fire by the 
 strikers was fresh in the public mind. But it was 
 the only time I have been suspected of sympathy 
 with violence in the settlement of labor disputes. 
 The trouble with that plan is that it does not settle 
 anything, but rakes up fresh injuries to rankle 
 indefinitely and widen the gap between the man 
 who does the work and the man who hires it done 
 so that he may have time to attend to his own. 
 Both workmen, they only need to understand each 
 other and their common interests to see the folly 
 of quarrelling. To do that they must know one 
 another; but a blow and a kick are a poor intro- 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 1 89 
 
 duction. I am not saying that the provocation is 
 not sometimes great; but better not. It does not 
 do any good, but a lot of harm. Besides, if we 
 haven't got to the point yet where we can settle our 
 disputes peaceably by discussion, the fault is not all 
 the employers by any manner of means. 
 
 We jumped out of the ashes into the fire, as it 
 turned out. At Scranton our train was held up. 
 There were torpedoes on the track ; rails torn up 
 or something. For want of something better to 
 do, we went out to take a look at the town. At 
 the head of the main street was a big crowd. Un- 
 taught by experience, we bored our way through 
 it to where a line of men with guns, some in their 
 shirt-sleeves, some in office coats, some in dusters, 
 were blocking advance to the coal company's stores. 
 The crowd hung sullenly back, leaving a narrow 
 space clear in front of the line. Within it a man — 
 I learned afterward that he was the Mayor of the 
 town — was haranguing the people, counselling 
 them to go back to their homes quietly. Suddenly 
 a brick was thrown from behind me and struck him 
 on the head. 
 
 I heard a word of brief command, the rattle of a 
 score of guns falling into as many extended hands, 
 and a volley was fired into the crowd point blank, 
 A man beside me weltered in his blood. There 
 was an instant's dead silence, then the rushing of 
 
igo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 a thousand feet and wild cries of terror as the mob 
 broke and fled. We ran with it. In all my life I 
 never ran so fast. I would never have believed 
 that I could do it. Ed teased me to the day of 
 his death about it, insisting that one might have 
 played marbles on my coat-tails, they flew out 
 behind so. But he was an easy winner in that race. 
 The riots were over, however, before they had 
 begun, and perhaps a greater calamity was averted. 
 It was the only time I was ever under iire, except 
 once when a crazy man came into Mulberry Street 
 years after and pointed a revolver at the reporters. 
 I regret to say that I gave no better account of my- 
 self then, and for a man who was so hot to go to 
 war I own it is a bad showing. Perhaps it was as 
 well I didn't go, even on that account. I might 
 have run the wrong way when it came to the 
 scratch. 
 
 We were not yet done suffering undeserved 
 indignities on that trip, for when we got as far as 
 Stanhope, on the Morris and Essex road, our 
 money had given out. I offered the station-master 
 my watch as security for the price of two tickets to 
 New York, but he bestowed only a contemptuous 
 glance upon it and remarked that there were a good 
 many fakirs running about the country palming off 
 " snide " gold watches on people. Our lantern out- 
 fit found no more favor with him, and we were 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 191 
 
 compelled to tramp it to the village in Schooley's 
 Mountains where my wife was then summering 
 with our baby. We walked all night, and when at 
 dawn we arrived, had the mortification of being 
 held up by the farmer's dog, who knew nothing 
 about us. He walked alongside of me all that day, 
 as I was pushing the baby-carriage up hill, eying 
 me with a look that said plainly enough I had 
 better not make a move to sneak away with the 
 child. Wells went on to the city to replenish our 
 funds. 
 
 And here I take leave of this loyal friend in the 
 story of my life. A better one I never had. He 
 lived to grow rich in possessions, but his wealth 
 was his undoing. It is one of the sore spots in my 
 life — and there are many more than I like to think 
 of — that when he needed me most I was not able 
 to be to him what I would and should have been. 
 We had drifted too far apart then, and the influence 
 I had over him once I had myself surrendered. It 
 was so with Charles. It was so with Nicolai. 
 They come, sometimes when I am alone, and nod 
 to me out of the dim past : " You were not tempted. 
 You should have helped ! " Yes, God help me ! it 
 is true. I am more to blame than they. I should 
 have helped and did not. What would I not give 
 that I could unsay that now ! Two of them died 
 by their own hand, the third in Bloomingdale. 
 
192 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 I had been making several attempts to get a foot- 
 hold on one of the metropolitan newspapers, but 
 always without success. That fall I tried the Trib- 
 7ine, the city editor of which, Mr. Shanks, was 
 one of my neighbors, but was told, with more frank- 
 ness than flattery, that I was " too green." Very 
 likely Mr. Shanks had been observing my cam- 
 paign against the beats and thought me a danger- 
 ous man in those days of big libel suits. I should 
 have done the same thing. But a few weeks after he 
 changed his mind and invited me to come on the 
 paper and try my hand. So I joined the staff of 
 the Tribune five years after its great editor had 
 died, a beaten and crushed man, one of the most 
 pathetic figures in American political history. 
 
 They were not halcyon days, those winter 
 months of reporting for the Tribjme. I was on 
 trial, and it was hard work and very little pay, not 
 enough to live on, so that we were compelled to 
 take to our little pile to make ends meet. But 
 there was always a bright fire and a cheery wel- 
 come for me at home, so what did it matter? It 
 was a good winter despite the desperate stunts 
 sometimes set me. Reporters on general work do 
 not sleep on flowery beds of ease. I remember 
 well one awful night when word came of a dread- 
 ful disaster on the Coney Island shore. Half of it 
 had been washed away by the sea, the report ran. 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 193 
 
 with houses and people. I was sent out to get at 
 the truth of the thing. I started in the early twi- 
 light and got as far as Gravesend. The rest of the 
 way I had to foot it through snow and slush knee- 
 deep in the face of a blinding storm, and got to 
 Sheepshead Bay dead beat, only to find that the ice 
 and the tide had shut off all approach to the island. 
 
 I did the next best thing ; I gathered from the 
 hotel-keepers of the Bay an account of the wreck 
 on the beach that lacked nothing in vividness, 
 thanks to their laudable desire not to see an enter- 
 prising reporter cheated out of his rightful " space." 
 Then I hired a sleigh and drove home through the 
 storm, wet through — "I can hear the water yet 
 running out of your boots," says my wife — wet 
 through and nearly frozen stiff, but tingling with 
 pride at my feat. 
 
 The Tribune next day was the only paper 
 that had an account of the tidal wave on the island. 
 But something about it did not seem to strike the 
 city editor just right. There was an unwonted 
 suavity in his summons when he called me to his 
 desk which I had learned to dread as liable to con- 
 ceal some fatal thrust. 
 
 " So you went to the island last night, Mr. Riis," 
 he observed, regarding me over the edge of the 
 paper. 
 
 " No, sir ! I couldn't get across ; nobody could." 
 
194 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 " Eh ! " He lowered the paper an inch, and took 
 a better look : " this very circumstantial account — " 
 
 " Was gathered from the hotel-keepers in Sheeps- 
 head Bay, who had seen it all. If there had been 
 a boat not stove by the ice, I would have got across 
 somehow." 
 
 Mr. Shanks dropped the paper and considered 
 me almost kindly. I saw that he had my bill for 
 the sleigh-ride in his hand. 
 
 "Right!" he said. "We'll allow the sleigh. 
 We'll allow even the stove, to a man who owns he 
 didn't see it, though it is pretty steep." He 
 pointed to a paragraph which described how, after 
 the wreck of the watchman's shanty, the kitchen 
 stove floated ashore with the house-cat alive and 
 safe upon it. I still believe that an unfriendly 
 printer played me that trick. 
 
 " Next time," he added, dismissing me, " make them 
 swear to the stove. There is no accounting for cats." 
 
 But, though I did not hear the last of it in the 
 office for a long time, I know that my measure was 
 taken by the desk that day. I was trusted after 
 that, even though I had made a mistake. 
 
 In spite of it, I did not get on. There was not 
 a living in it for me, that was made plain enough. 
 We were too many doing general work. After six 
 months of hard grubbing I decided that I had better 
 seek my fortune elsewhere. Spring was coming. 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 195 
 
 and it seemed a waste of time to stay where I was. 
 I wrote out my resignation and left it on the city 
 editor's desk. Some errand took me out of the 
 office. When I returned it lay there still, unopened. 
 I saw it, and thought I would try another week. I 
 might make a strike. So I took the note away and 
 tore it up, just as Mr. Shanks entered the room. 
 
 That evening it set in snowing at a great rate. 
 I had been uptown on a late assignment, and was 
 coming across Printing-House Square, running at 
 top speed to catch the edition. The wind did its 
 part. There is no corner in all New York where it 
 blows as it does around the Tribune building. As I 
 flew into Spruce Street I brought up smack against 
 two men coming out of the side door. One of them 
 I knocked off his feet into a snowdrift. He floun- 
 dered about in it and swore dreadfully. By the 
 voice I knew that it was Mr. Shanks. I stood pet- 
 rified, mechanically pinning his slouch hat to the 
 ground with my toe. He got upon his feet at last 
 and came toward me, much wrought up. 
 
 "Who in thunder — " he growled angrily and 
 caught sight of my rueful face. I was thinking I 
 might as well have left my note on his desk that 
 morning, for now I was going to be discharged 
 anyhow. 
 
 " Is that the way you treat your city editor, Riis t " 
 he asked, while I handed him his hat. 
 
196 THE MAKING OP' AN AMERICAN 
 
 " It was the wind, sir, and I was running — " 
 
 " Running ! What is up that set you going at 
 that rate ? " 
 
 I told him of the meeting I had attended — it was 
 of no account — and that I was running to catch 
 the edition. He heard me out. 
 
 " And do you always run like that when you are 
 out on assignments ? " 
 
 " When it is late like this, yes. How else would 
 I get my copy in .? " 
 
 " Well, just take a reef in when you round the 
 corner," he said, brushing the snow from his clothes. 
 " Don't run your city editor down again." And he 
 went his way. 
 
 It was with anxious forebodings I went to the office 
 the next morning. Mr. Shanks was there before 
 me. He was dictating to his secretary, Mr. Taggart, 
 who had been witness of the collision of the night 
 before, when I came in. Presently I was summoned 
 to his desk, and went there with sinking heart. 
 Things had commenced to look up a bit in the last 
 twenty-four hours, and I had hoped yet to make it 
 go. Now, it was all over. 
 
 " Mr. Riis," he began stiffly, " you knocked me 
 down last night without cause." 
 
 " Yes, sir ! But I — " 
 
 " Into a snowdrift," he went on, unheeding. " Nice 
 thing for a reporter to do to his commanding officer. 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE 
 
 197 
 
 Now, sir ! this will not do. We must find some way 
 of preventing it in the future. Our man at Police 
 Headquarters has left. I am going to send you up 
 there in his place. You can run there all you want 
 to, and you will want to all you can. It is a place 
 
 Mulberry Street. 
 
 that needs a manwho will run to get his copy in 
 and tell the truth and stick to it. You will find 
 plenty of fighting there. But don't go knocking 
 people down — unless you have to." 
 
 And with this kind of an introduction I was sent 
 off to Mulberry Street, where I was to find my life- 
 work. It is twenty-three years since the day I took 
 
igS THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 my first walk up there and looked over the ground 
 that has since become so familiar to me. I knew it 
 by reputation as the hardest place on the paper, and 
 it was in no spirit of exultation that I looked out 
 upon the stirring life of the block. If the truth be 
 told, I think I was, if anything, a bit afraid. The 
 story of the big fight the Tribune reporter was hav- 
 ing on his hands up there with all the other papers 
 had long been echoing through newspaperdom, and 
 I was not deceived. But, after all, I had been doing 
 little else myself, and, having given no offence, my 
 cause would be just. In which case, what had I to 
 fear ? So in my soul I commended my work and 
 myself to the God of battles who gives victory, and 
 took hold. 
 
 Right here, lest I make myself appear better than 
 I am, I want to say that I am not a praying man in 
 the sense of being versed in the language of prayer 
 or anything of that kind. I wish I were. So, I 
 might have been better able to serve my unhappy 
 friends when they needed me. Indeed, those who 
 have known me under strong provocation — provo- 
 cation is very strong in Mulberry Street — would 
 scorn such an intimation, and, I am sorry to say, 
 with cause. I was once a deacon, but they did not 
 often let me lead in prayer. My supplications ordi- 
 narily take the form of putting the case plainly to 
 Him who is the source of all right and all justice, 
 
EARLY MARRIED LIFE igg 
 
 and leaving it so. If I were to find that I could not 
 do that, I should decline to go into the fight, or, if I 
 had to, should feel that I were to be justly beaten. 
 In all the years of my reporting I have never 
 omitted this when anything big was on foot, 
 whether a fire, a murder, a robbery, or whatever 
 might come in the way of duty, and I have never 
 heard that my reports were any the worse for it. 
 I know they were better. Perhaps the notion of 
 a police reporter praying that he may write a good 
 murder story may seem ludicrous, even irreverent, 
 to some people. But that is only because they fail 
 to make out in it the human element which digni- 
 fies anything and rescues it from reproach. Unless 
 I could go to my story that way I would not go to 
 it at all. I am very sure that there is no irrever- 
 ence in it — just the reverse. 
 
 So I dived in. But before I did it I telegraphed 
 to my wife : — 
 
 " Got staff appointment. Police Headquarters. 
 #25 a week. Hurrah ! " 
 
 I knew it would make her happy. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 
 
 It was well that I stopped to make explanations 
 before I took hold in my new office. Mighty little 
 time was left me after. What the fight was about 
 to which I fell heir I have long since forgotten. 
 Mulberry Street in those days was prone to such 
 things. Somebody was always fighting somebody 
 else for some fancied injury or act of bad faith in 
 the gathering of the news. For the time being 
 they all made common cause against the reporter 
 of the Tribune, who also represented the local 
 bureau of the Associated Press. They hailed the 
 coming of " the Dutchman " with shouts of derision, 
 and decided, I suppose, to finish me off while I was 
 new. So they pulled themselves together for an 
 effort, and within a week I was so badly " beaten " 
 in the Police Department, in the Health Depart- 
 ment, in the Fire Department, the Coroner's office, 
 and the Excise Bureau, all of which it was my task 
 to cover, that the manager of the Press Bureau 
 called me down to look me over. He reported to 
 the Tribune that he did not think I would do. 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 201 
 
 But Mr. Shanks told him to wait and see. In some 
 way I heard of it, and that settled it that I was to 
 win. I might be beaten in many a battle, but how 
 could I lose the fight with a general like that ? 
 
 And, indeed, in another week it was their turn 
 to be called down to give an account of themselves. 
 The "Dutchman" had stolen a march on them. 
 I suppose it was to them a very astounding thing, 
 yet it was perfectly simple. Their very strength, 
 as they held it to be, was their weakness. They 
 were a dozen against one, and each one of them 
 took it for granted that the other eleven were 
 attending to business and that he need not exert 
 himself overmuch. A good many years after, I had 
 that experience as a member of a board of twelve 
 trustees, each one of whom had lent his name but 
 not his work to the cause we were supposed to 
 represent. When we met. at the end of that season, 
 and heard how narrow had been the escape from 
 calamity due to utter lack of management, a good 
 Methodist brother put in words what we were each 
 and every one of us thinking about. 
 
 " Brethren," he said, '' so far as I can make out, 
 but for the interposition of a merciful Providence 
 we should all be in jail, as we deserve. Let us 
 pray ! " 
 
 I think that prayer was more than lip-service 
 with most of us. I know that I registered a vow 
 
203 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 that I would never again be trustee of anything with- 
 out trusteeing it in fact. And I have kept the vow. 
 But to return to Mulberry Street. The immedi- 
 ate result of this first victory of mine was a whirl- 
 wind onslaught on me, fiercer than anything that 
 
 had gone before. I 
 expected it and met 
 it as well as I could, 
 holding my own after 
 a fashion. When, 
 from sheer exhaus- 
 tion, they let up to 
 see if I was still 
 there, I paid them 
 back with two or 
 three "beats" I had 
 stored up for the oc- 
 casion. And then we 
 settled down to the 
 ten years' war for the 
 mastery, out of which I was to come at last fairly 
 the victor, and with the only renown I have ever 
 coveted or cared to have, that of being the " boss 
 reporter " in Mulberry Street. I have so often been 
 asked in later years what my work was there,^ and 
 
 1 1 say was ; only in the last twelvemonth have I grasped Mr. 
 Dana's meaning in calling his reporters his "young men.'' They need 
 to be that. I, for one, have grown too old. 
 
 Tribune Police Bureau. 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 203 
 
 how I found there the point of view from which 
 I wrote my books, that I suppose I shall have to 
 go somewhat into the details of it. 
 
 The police reporter on a newspaper, then, is the 
 one who gathers and handles all the news that 
 means trouble to some one : the murders, fires, 
 suicides, robberies, and all that sort, before it gets 
 into court. He has an office in Mulberry Street, 
 across from Police Headquarters, where he receives 
 the first intimation of the trouble through the pre- 
 cinct i-eports. Or else he does not receive it. The 
 police do not like to tell the public of a robbery 
 or a safe " cracking," for instance. They claim that 
 it interferes with the ends of justice. What they 
 really mean is that it brings ridicule or censure 
 upon them to have the public know that they do 
 not catch every thief, or even most of them. They 
 would like that impression to go out, for police 
 work is largely a game of bluff. Here, then, is 
 an opportunity for the " beats " I speak of. The 
 reporter who, through acquaintance, friendship, or 
 natural detective skill, can get that which it is the 
 policy of the police to conceal from him, wins. It 
 may seem to many a reader a matter of no great 
 importance if a man should miss a safe-burglary 
 for his paper; but reporting is a business, a very 
 exacting one at that, and if he will stop a moment 
 and think what it is he instinctively looks at first in 
 
204 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 his morning paper, even if he has schooled himself 
 not to read it through, he will see it differently. 
 The fact is that it is all a great human drama in 
 which these things are the acts that mean grief, 
 suffering, revenge upon somebody, loss or gain. 
 The reporter who is behind the scenes sees the 
 tumult of passions, and not rarely a human heroism 
 that redeems all the rest. It is his task so to por- 
 tray it that we can all see its meaning, or at all 
 events catch the human drift of it, not merely the 
 foulness and the reek of blood. If he can do that, 
 he has performed a signal service, and his murder 
 story may easily come to speak more eloquently to 
 the minds of thousands than the sermon preached 
 to a hundred in the church on Sunday. 
 
 Of the advantages that smooth the way to news- 
 getting I had none. I was a stranger, and I was 
 never distinguished for detective ability. But good 
 hard work goes a long way toward making up for 
 lack of genius ; and I mentioned only one of the 
 opportunities for getting ahead of my opponents. 
 They were lying all about us. Any seemingly inno- 
 cent slip sent out from the police telegraph office 
 across the way recording a petty tenement-house fire 
 might hide a fire-bug, who always makes shuddering 
 appeal to our fears ; the finding of John Jones sick 
 and destitute in the street meant, perhaps, a story 
 full of the deepest pathos. Indeed, I can think of a 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 
 
 205 
 
 i V^^mSKBS^^A 
 
 r 
 
 
 ]^ 
 
 
 
 1^'' 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 K'.' 
 
 
 m 
 
 .,:^.E1#k-.. ■. ■'■■.:1 
 
 '" '■* .-•^■IRl^ ^ J^HRi 
 
 r 
 
 r 
 
 -l^"?^ 
 
 V 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 "In which lay dying a French nobleman of proud and ancient name." 
 
 dozen now that did. I see before me, as though it 
 were yesterday, the desolate Wooster Street attic, 
 with wind and rain sweeping through the bare room 
 in which lay dying a French nobleman of proud and 
 ancient name, the last of his house. He was one of 
 my early triumphs. New York is a queer town. 
 The grist of every hopper in the world comes to it. 
 I shall not soon forget the gloomy tenement in Clin- 
 ton Street where that day a poor shoemaker had 
 shot himself. His name, Struensee, had brought 
 me over. I knew there could not be such another. 
 That was where my Danish birth stood me in good 
 stead. I knew the story of Christian VH.'s master- 
 ful minister ; of his fall and trial on the charge of 
 
206 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 supplanting his master in the affections of the young 
 and beautiful Queen, sister of George III. Very 
 old men told yet, when I was a boy, of that dark 
 day when the proud head fell under the execu 
 tioner's axe in the castle square — dark for the 
 people whose champion Struensee had tried to be. 
 My mother was born and reared in the castle at 
 Elsinore where the unhappy Queen, disgraced and 
 an outcast, wrote on the window-pane of her prison 
 cell : " Lord, keep me innocent ; make others great." 
 It was all a familiar story to me, and when I sat be- 
 side that dead shoemaker and, looking through his 
 papers, read there that the tragedy of a hundred 
 years before was his family story, I knew that I held 
 in my hands the means of paying off all accumu- 
 lated scores to date. 
 
 Did I settle in full ? Yes, I did. I was in a fight 
 not of my own choosing, and I was well aware that 
 my turn was coming. I hit as hard as I knew how, 
 and so did they. When I speak of " triumphs," it 
 is professionally. There was no hard-heartedness 
 about it. We did not gloat over the misfortunes 
 we described. We were reporters, not ghouls. 
 There lies before me as I write a letter that came 
 in the mail this afternoon from a woman who bit- 
 terly objects to my diagnosis of the reporter's as the 
 highest and noblest of all callings. She signs her- 
 self " a sufferer from reporters' unkindness," and 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 207 
 
 tells me how in the hour of her deep affliction they 
 have trodden upon her heart. Can I not, she asks, 
 encourage a public sentiment that will make such 
 reporting disreputable ? All my life I have tried to 
 do so, and, in spite of the evidence of yellow journal- 
 ism to the contrary, I think we are coming nearer to 
 that ideal ; in other words, we are emerging from sav- 
 agery. Striving madly for each other's scalps as we 
 were, I do not think that we scalped any one else un- 
 justly. I know I did not. They were not particularly 
 scrupulous, I am bound to say. In their rage and 
 mortification at having underestimated the enemy, 
 they did things unworthy of men and of reporters. 
 They stole my slips in the telegraph office and substi- 
 tuted others that sent me off on a wild-goose chase to 
 the farthest river wards in the midnight hour, think- 
 ing so to tire me out. But they did it once too often. 
 I happened on a very important case on such a trip, 
 and made the most of it, telegraphing down a col- 
 umn or more about it from the office, while the 
 enemy watched me helplessly from the Headquarters' 
 stoop across the way. They were gathered there, 
 waiting for me to come back, and received me with 
 loud and mocking ah ems ! and respectfully sympa- 
 thetic toots on a tin horn, kept for that purpose. 
 Its voice had a mournful strain in it that was espe- 
 cially exasperating. But when, without paying any 
 attention to them, I busied myself with the wire at 
 
208 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 once, and kept at it right along, they scented 
 trouble, and consulted anxiously among themselves. 
 My story finished, I went out and sat on my own 
 stoop and said ahem ! in my turn in as many aggra- 
 vating ways as I could. They knew they were 
 beaten then, and shortly they had confirmation of 
 it. The report came in from the precinct at 2 a.m., 
 but it was then too late for their papers, for there 
 were no telephones in those days. I had the only 
 telegraph wire. After that they gave up such tricks, 
 and the Tribune saved many cab fares at night ; for 
 there were no elevated railroads, either, in those 
 days, or electric or cable cars. 
 
 On the other hand, this entei^prise of ours was 
 often of the highest service to the public. When, 
 for instance, in following up a case of destitution 
 and illness involving a whole family, I, tracing back 
 the origin of it, came upon a party at which ham 
 sandwiches had been the bill of fare, and upon look- 
 ing up the guests, fouqd seventeen of the twenty- 
 five sick with identical symptoms, it required no 
 medical knowledge, but merely the ordinary infor- 
 mation and training of the reporter, to diagnose 
 trichinosis. The seventeen had half a dozen differ- 
 ent doctors, who, knowing nothing of party or ham, 
 were helpless, and saw only cases of rheumatism or 
 such like. I called as many of them as I could 
 reach together that night, introduced them to one 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 209 
 
 another and to my facts, and asked them what they 
 thought then. What they thought made a sensa- 
 tion in my paper the next morning, and practically 
 decided the fight, though the enemy was able to 
 spoil my relish for the ham by reporting the poison- 
 ing of a whole family with a dish of depraved smelt 
 while I was chasing up the trichinae. However, I 
 had my revenge. I walked in that afternoon upon 
 Dr. Cyrus Edson at his microscope surrounded by 
 my adversaries, who besought him to deny my story. 
 The doctor looked quizzically at them and made 
 reply : — 
 
 " I would like to oblige you, boys, but how I can 
 do it with those fellows squirming under the micro- 
 scope I don't see. I took them from the flesh of 
 one of the patients who was sent to Trinity Hospi- 
 tal to-day. Look at them yourself." 
 
 He winked at me, and, peering into his micro- 
 scope, I saw my diagnosis more than confirmed. 
 There were scores of the little beasts curled up and 
 burrowing in the speck of tissue. The unhappy 
 patient died that week. 
 
 We had our specialties in this contest of wits. 
 One was distinguished as a sleuth. He fed on 
 detective mysteries as a cat on a chicken-bone. He 
 thought them out by day and dreamed them out 
 by night, to the great exasperation of the official 
 detectives, with whom their solution was a com- 
 
2IO THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 mercial, not in the least an intellectual, affair. 
 They solved them on the plane of the proverbial 
 lack of honor among thieves, by the formula, " You 
 scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." 
 
 Another came out strong on fires. He knew the 
 history of every house in town that ran any risk of 
 being burned; knew every fireman; and could tell 
 within a thousand dollars, more or less, what was 
 the value of the goods stored in any building in the 
 dry-goods district, and for how much they were 
 insured. If he couldn't, he did anyhow, and his 
 guesses often came near the fact, as shown in the 
 final adjustment. He sniffed a firebug from afar, 
 and knew without asking how much salvage there 
 was in a bale of cotton after being twenty-four 
 hours in the fire. He is dead, poor fellow. In life 
 he was fond of a joke, and in death the joke clung 
 to him in a way wholly unforeseen. The firemen 
 in the next block, with whom he made his head- 
 quarters when off duty, so that he might always be 
 within hearing of the gong, wished to give some 
 tangible evidence of their regard for the old re- 
 porter, but, being in a hurry, left it to the florist, 
 who knew him well, to choose the design. He hit 
 upon a floral fire-badge as the proper thing, and 
 thus it was that when the company of mourners 
 was assembled, and the funeral service in progress, 
 there arrived and was set upon the cofifin, in the 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 211 
 
 view of all, that triumph of the florist's art, a shield 
 of white roses, with this legend written across it 
 in red immortelles : " Admit within fire lines only." 
 It was shocking, but irresistible. It brought down 
 even the house of mourning. 
 
 The incident recalls another, which at the time 
 caused me no little astonishment. A telegram 
 from Long Branch had announced the drowning 
 of a young actor, I think, whose three sisters lived 
 over on Eighth Avenue. I had gone to the house 
 to learn about the accident, and found them in the 
 first burst of grief, dissolved in tears. It was a 
 very hot July day, and to guard against sunstroke 
 I had put a cabbage-leaf in my hat. On the way 
 over I forgot all about it, and the leaf, getting limp, 
 settled down snugly upon my head like a ridiculous 
 green skullcap. Knowing nothing of this, I was 
 wholly unprepared for the effect my entrance, hat- 
 less, had upon the weeping family. The young 
 ladies ceased crying, stared wildly, and then, to my 
 utter bewilderment, broke into hysterical laughter. 
 For the moment I thought they had gone mad. It 
 was only when in my perplexity I put up my hand 
 to rub my head, that I came upon the cause of the 
 strange hilarity. For years afterward the thought 
 of it had the same effect upon me that the cabbage- 
 leaf produced so unexpectedly in that grief-stricken 
 home. 
 
212 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 I might fill many pages with such stories, but I 
 shall not attempt it. Do they seem mean and 
 trifling in the retrospect? Not at all. They were 
 my work, and I liked it. And I got a good deal 
 of fun out of it from time to time. I mind Dr. 
 Bryant's parrot story. Dr. Joseph D. Bryant was 
 Health Commissioner at the time, and though we 
 rarely agreed about anything — there is something 
 curious about that, that the men I have thought 
 most of were quite often those with whom I dis- 
 agreed ordinarily about everything — I can say 
 truly that there have been few better Health Com- 
 missioners, and none for whom T have had a mc5re. 
 hearty respect and liking. Dr. Bryant especially 
 hated reporters. He was built that way; he dis- 
 liked notoriety for himself and his friends, and 
 therefore, when one of these complained of a neigh- 
 bor's parrot to the Health Department, he gave 
 strict orders that the story was to be guarded from 
 the reporters, and particularly from me, who had 
 grieved him more than once by publishing things 
 which, in his opinion, I ought to have said nothing 
 about. I heard of it within the hour, and promptly 
 set my wit against the Doctor's to unearth the 
 parrot. 
 
 But it would not come out. Dig as I might, I 
 could not get at it. I tried every way, while the 
 Doctor laughed in his sleeve and beamed upon me. 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 
 
 213 
 
 At last, in desperation, I hit upon a bold plan. I 
 would get it out of the Doctor himself. I knew his 
 hours for coming to Sanitary Headquarters — from 
 his clinics, I suppose. He always came up the stairs 
 
 
 
 
 Our Office — my Partner, Mr. Ensign at the Desk, I in the Corner. 
 
 absorbed in thought, noticing nothing that passed. 
 I waylaid him in the turn of the dark hall, and be- 
 fore he had time to think plumped at him an — 
 
 " Oh, Doctor! about that parrot of your friend — 
 er-er, oh ! what was his name ? " 
 
 " Alley," said the Doctor, mechanically, and went 
 in, only half hearing what I said. I made for the 
 city directory. There were four Alleys in it. In 
 an hour I had located my man, and the next morn- 
 ing's Tribune had a column account of the tragedy 
 of the parrot. 
 
214 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 The Doctor was very angry. He went to Head- 
 quarters and summoned me solemnly before the 
 assembled Board. The time had come, he said, to 
 have an explanation from me as to who it was that 
 gave me information against orders and the public 
 interest. Evidently there was a traitor in camp, by 
 whatever means I had procured his treachery. 
 
 In vain did I try to show the Doctor how unpro- 
 fessional my conduct would be in betraying my 
 informant, even how contemptible. He was inexo- 
 rable. This time I should not escape, nor my accom- 
 plice either. Out with it, and at once. With a 
 show of regretful resignation I gave in. For once 
 I would break my rule and " tell on " my informant. 
 I thought I detected a slight sneer on the Doctor's 
 lip as he said that was well ; for he was a gentleman, 
 every inch of him, and I know he hated me for tell- 
 ing. The other Commissioners looked grave. 
 
 "Well, then," I said, "the man who gave me the 
 parrot story was — you. Dr. Bryant." 
 
 The Doctor sat bolt upright with a jerk. " No 
 bad jokes, Mr. Riis," he said. " Who gave you the 
 story ? " 
 
 " Why, you did. Don't you remember.?" And 
 I told how I waylaid him in the hall. His face, as 
 the narrative ran on, was a study. Anger, mirth, 
 offended pride, struggled there ; but the humor of 
 the thing got the upper hand in the end, and the 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 21 5 
 
 one who laughed loudest in the Board room was 
 Dr. Bryant himself. In my soul I believe that he 
 was not a little relieved, for under a manner of much 
 sternness he had the tenderest of hearts. 
 
 But it was not always I who came out ahead in 
 the daily encounters which made up the routine of 
 my day. It was an important part of my task to be 
 on such terms with the heads of departments that 
 they would talk freely to us so that we might know 
 in any given case, or with reference to the policy of 
 the department, " where we were at." I do not 
 mean talk for publication. It is a common mistake 
 of people who know nothing about the newspaper 
 profession that reporters flit about public men like 
 so many hawks, seizing upon what they can find to 
 publish as their lawful prey. No doubt there are 
 such guerrillas, and they have occasionally more 
 than justified their existence ; but, as applied to the 
 staff reporters of a great newspaper, nothing could 
 be farther from the truth. The department reporter 
 has his field as carefully laid out for him every day 
 as any physician who starts out on his route, and 
 within that field, if he is the right sort of man, he is 
 friend, companion, and often counsellor to the offi- 
 cials with whom he comes in contact — always sup- 
 posing that he is not fighting them in open war. 
 He may serve a Republican paper and the President 
 of the Police Board may be a Democrat of -Demo- 
 
2l6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 crats ; yet in the privacy of his office he will talk as 
 freely to the reporter as if he were his most intimate 
 party friend, knowing that he will not publish what 
 is said in confidence. This is the reporter's capital, 
 without which he cannot in the long run do business. 
 
 I presume he is sometimes tempted to gamble 
 with it for a stake. I remember well when the 
 temptation came to me once after a quiet hour with 
 Police Commissioner Matthews, who had been tell- 
 ing me the inside history of an affair which just 
 then was setting the whole town by the ears. I 
 told him that I thought I should have to print it; 
 it was too good to keep. No, it wouldn't do, he 
 said. I knew well enough he was right, but I in- 
 sisted ; the chance was too good a one to miss. 
 Mr. Matthews shook his head. He was an invalid, 
 and was taking his daily treatment with an electric 
 battery while we talked and smoked. He warned 
 me laughingly against the consequences of what I 
 proposed to do, and changed the subject. 
 
 " Ever try these .? " he said, giving me the handles. 
 I took them, unsuspecting, and felt the current tin- 
 gle in my finger-tips. The next instant it gripped 
 me like a vice. I squirmed with pain. 
 
 " Stop ! " I yelled, and tried to throw the things 
 away; but my hands crooked themselves about them 
 like a bird's claws and held them fast. They wouic^ 
 not let go. I looked at the Commissioner. He was 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 217 
 
 studying the battery leisurely, and slowly pulling 
 out the plug that increased the current. 
 
 " For mercy's sake, stop ! " I called to him. He 
 looked up inquiringly. 
 
 " About that interview, now," he drawled. " Do 
 you think you ought to print — " 
 
 " Wow, wow ! Let go, I tell you ! " It hurt 
 dreadfully. He pulled the thing out another peg. 
 
 "You know it wouldn't do, really. Now, if — " 
 He made as if to still further increase the current. 
 I surrendered. 
 
 " Let up," I begged, " and I will not say a word. 
 Only let up." 
 
 He set me free. He never spoke of it once in all 
 the years I knew him, but now and again he would 
 offer me, with a dry smile, the use of his battery as 
 " very good for the health." I always declined 
 with thanks. 
 
 I got into Mulberry Street at what might well 
 be called the heroic age of police reporting. It 
 rang still with the echoes of the unfathomed 
 Charley Ross mystery. That year occurred the 
 Stewart grave robbery and the Manhattan Bank 
 burglary — three epoch-making crimes that each 
 in its way made a sensation such as New York 
 has not known since. For though Charley Ross 
 was stolen in Philadelphia, the search for him cen- 
 tred in the metropolis. The three-million-dollar 
 
2l8 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 burglary within the shadow of PoHce Headquarters 
 gave us Inspector Byrnes, who broke up the old 
 
 "About that interview, now," he drawled. 
 
 gangs of crooks and drove those whom he did not 
 put in jail over the sea to ply their trade in Europe. 
 The Stewart grave robbery ended the career of 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 219- 
 
 the ghouls, and the Charley Ross case put a stop 
 to child-stealing for a generation, by making those 
 crimes unprofitable. The public excitement was 
 so great that it proved impossible for the thieves 
 to deliver the goods and effect the change for ran- 
 som. At intervals for years these cases kept turn- 
 ing up in one new phase or another. You could 
 never tell where to look for them. Indeed, I 
 have to thank the Stewart ghouls for the first pub- 
 lic recognition that came to me in those early 
 years of toil. Of all the mysteries that ever vexed 
 a reporter's soul, that was the most agonizing. 
 The police, most of the time, were as much in the 
 dark as the rest of us, and nothing was to be got 
 from that source. Heaven knows I tried. In our 
 desperation we caught at every straw. One stormy 
 night in the hottest of the excitement Judge Hilton, 
 who had offered the ^50,000 reward for the stolen 
 body on behalf of Mrs. Stewart, went to Head- 
 quarters and stayed an hour in the detective office. 
 When he came out, he was attended by two of the 
 oldest and ablest detectives. Clearly something big 
 was on foot. They were just like so many sphinxes, 
 and went straight to the carriage that waited at the 
 Mulberry Street door. I do not know how it ever 
 entered my head ; perhaps it didn't at all, but was 
 just done mechanically. The wind had blown out 
 the lamp on the steps, and the street was in pro- 
 
220 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 found darkness. As they stepped into the carriage, 
 I, with only the notion in my head that here was 
 news which must be got somehow, went in last and 
 sank down in the vacant seat, pulling the door to 
 after me. The carriage went on. To my intense 
 relief, it rounded the corner. I was undiscovered ! 
 But at that moment it came to a sudden stop. 
 
 "The carriage went on." 
 
 An invisible hand opened the door, and, grasping 
 my collar, gently but firmly propelled me into the 
 street and dropped me there. Then the carriage 
 went on. Not a word had been spoken. They 
 understood and so did I. It was enough. 
 
 But, as I said, I had my revenge. It came when 
 the opposition reporters, believing the mystery to 
 be near its solution,^ entered into a conspiracy to 
 
 ' This was, as nearly as I remember, in tlie autumn of 1879, tlie year 
 following the robbery. 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 221 
 
 forestall it and deliberately invented the lines of the 
 coming denouement. Day by day they published 
 its progress " upon the authority of a high official " 
 who never existed, announcing that "behind each 
 one of the grave-robbers stood a detective with 
 uplifted hand " ready to arrest him when the word 
 was given. It was truly the dawn of yellow jour- 
 nalism. With such extraordinary circumstantiality 
 were the accounts given that for once my office 
 wavered in its faith in Ensign and me. Amos 
 Ensign was my partner at the time, a fine fellow 
 and a good reporter. If we turned out to be wrong, 
 we were given to understand our careers on the 
 Tribune would be at an end. I slept little or 
 none during that month of intense work and excite- 
 ment, but spent my days as my nights sifting every 
 scrap of evidence. There was nothing to justify the 
 stories, and we maintained in our paper that they 
 were lies. Mr. Shanks himself left the city desk 
 and came up to work with us. His head, too, 
 would fall, we heard, if his faith in the police office 
 had been misplaced. The bubble burst at last, and, 
 as we expected, there was nothing in it. The Trib- 
 une was justified. The opposition reporters were 
 fined or suspended. Ensign and I were made 
 much of in the office. I have still the bulletin in 
 which Mr. Shanks spoke of me as the man whose 
 work had done much to " make the Tribune police 
 
222 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 reports the best in the city." Sweet comfort for 
 
 "the Dutchman"! My salary was raised, but that 
 
 was of less account. We had saved the day and 
 
 A. . n r r . . the desk. After 
 
 aX: ^j^ y^^..^ L&, J,c^.^ that It was not 
 
 W, (Jjz, ^ o^iut-r-/^^^,^^ Ui^ all pulling up- 
 
 ilu/ J^T^^ <fi>6uix. «^t*v?^ Al^ berry Street. 
 
 L^^-^^ 1^ Giy-. Nothing in this 
 
 ^ KARiynUL^ ^«<J-n /teb u/ij^ &USV. world succeeds 
 
 /^ . K^ jt hke success. 
 
 ■ '-^-^ ■^ ' t^ o^. Before that I 
 
 ;wa«juc<xAij %XCr--£uJ^ orAyr^ ol<9 had been once 
 **'^'*^' - suspended my- 
 
 self for missing 
 
 The Bulletin. ,i • 
 
 somethmg m 
 this very case. I was not to blame, and therefore 
 was angry and refused to make explanations. That 
 night, as I sat sulking in my home in Brooklyn, 
 a big warehouse fire broke out down town. From 
 our house on the hill I watched it grow beyond 
 control, and knew that the boys were hard put to it. 
 It was late, and as I thought of the hastening 
 hours, the police reporter got the better of the man, 
 and I hurried down to take a hand. When I turned 
 up in the office after midnight to write the story, 
 the night editor eyed me curiously. 
 
 " I thought, Riis, you were suspended," he said. 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 223 
 
 For a moment I wavered, smarting under the in- 
 justice of it all. But my note-book reminded me. 
 
 " I am," I said, " and when I am done with this 
 I am going home till you send for me. But this 
 fire — can I have a desk?" 
 
 The night editor got up and came over and shook 
 hands. " Take mine," he said. " There ! take it ! " 
 
 They sent for me the next day. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that all this was smooth 
 sailing. Along with the occasional commendations 
 for battles won against '' the mob " went constant 
 and grievous complaints of the editors supplied by 
 the Associated Press, and even by some in my own 
 office now and then, of my " style." It was very 
 bad, according to my critics, altogether editorial 
 and presuming, and not to be borne. So I was 
 warned that I must mend it and give the facts, 
 sparing comments. By that I suppose they meant 
 that I must write, not what I thought, but what 
 they probably might think of the news. But, good 
 or bad, I could write in no other way, and kept 
 right on. Not that I think, by any manners of 
 means, that it was the best way, but it was mine. 
 And goodness knows I had no desire to be an 
 editor. I have not now. I prefer to be a reporter 
 and deal with the facts to being an editor and lying 
 about them. In the end the complaints died out. 
 I suppose I was given up as hopeless. 
 
224 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Perhaps there had crept into my reports too 
 much of my fight with the poHce. For by that 
 time I had included them in "the opposition." 
 They had not been friendly from the first, and it 
 was best so. I had them all in front then, and an 
 open enemy is better any day than a false friend 
 who may stab you in the back. In the quarter of 
 a century since, I have seldom been on any other 
 terms with the police. I mean with the heads of 
 them. The rank and file, the man with the night- 
 stick as Roosevelt liked to call him, is all right, if 
 properly led. He has rarely been properly led. It 
 may be that, in that respect at least, my reports 
 might have been tempered somewhat to advantage. 
 Though I don't know. I prefer, after all, to have 
 it out, all out. And it did come out, and my mind 
 was relieved ; which was something. 
 
 Speaking of night-sticks reminds me of seeing 
 General Grant in his to my mind greatest hour, 
 the only time he was ever beaten, and by a police- 
 man. I told his son, Fred Grant, of it when he 
 became a Police Commissioner in the nineties, but 
 I do not think he appreciated it. He was not cast 
 in his great father's mould. The occasion I refer to 
 was after the General's second term in the Presi- 
 dency. He was staying at the Fifth Avenue Hotel 
 when one morning the Masonic Temple was 
 burned. The fire-line was drawn halfway down 
 
'The General said never a word." 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 225 
 
 the block toward Fifth Avenue, but the poHce were 
 much hampered by the crowd, and were out of 
 patience when I, standing by, saw a man in a great 
 ulster with head buried deep in the collar, a cigar 
 sticking straight out, coming down the street from 
 the hotel. I recognized him at sight as General 
 Grant. The policeman who blocked his way did 
 not. He grabbed him by the collar, swung him 
 about, and, hitting him a resounding whack across 
 the back with his club, yelled out : — 
 
 " What's the matter with you ? Don't you see 
 the fire-lines ? Chase yourself out of here, and be 
 quick about it." 
 
 The General said never a word. He did not 
 stop to argue the matter. He had run up against 
 a sentinel, and when stopped went the other way. 
 That was all. The man had a right to be there ; 
 he had none. I was never so much an admirer of 
 Grant as since that day. It was true greatness. 
 A smaller man would have made a row, stood upon 
 his dignity and demanded the punishment of the 
 policeman. As for him, there was probably never 
 so badly frightened a policeman when I told him 
 whom he had clubbed. I will warrant he did not 
 sleep for a week, fearing all kinds of things. No 
 need of it. Grant probably never gave him a 
 thought. 
 
 It was in pursuit of the story of a Breton noble- 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 man of hoped-for ancient lineage that I met with 
 the most disheartening set-back of my experience. 
 The setting of the case was most alluring. The 
 old baron — for he was nothing less, though in 
 Minetta Lane he passed for a cat's-meat man who 
 peddled his odd ware from door to door — had been 
 found by the police sick and starving in his wretched 
 cellar, and had been taken to Bellevue Hospital. 
 The inevitable de suggested the story, and papers 
 that I found in his trunk — papers most carefully 
 guarded and cherished — told enough of it to whet 
 my appetite to its keenest edge. If the owner could 
 only be made to talk, if his stubborn family pride 
 could only be overcome, there was every promise 
 here of a sensation by means of which who could 
 tell but belated justice might even be done him and 
 his family — apart from the phenomenal trouncing 
 I should be administering through him to my rivals. 
 Visions of conspiracies, court intrigues, confisca- 
 tions, and what not, danced before my greedy men- 
 tal vision. I flew rather than walked up to Bellevue 
 Hospital to offer him my paper and pen in the 
 service of right and of vengeance, only to find that 
 I was twenty-four hours late. The patient had 
 already been transferred to the Charity Hospital as 
 a bad case. The boat had gone ; there would not 
 be another for several hours. I could not wait, but 
 it was a comfort, at all events, to know that my 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 227 
 
 baron was where I could get at him on the morrow. 
 I dreamed some more dreams of happiness as I 
 went back, and was content. 
 
 As it happened, I was very busy the next day 
 and for several days after. The week was nearly 
 spent when I found myself on the boat going up to 
 the island. At the hospital office they reassured 
 me with a queer look. Yes ; my man was there, 
 likely to stay there for a little while. The doctor 
 would presently take me to see him on his rounds. 
 In one of the big wards I found him at last, num- 
 bered in the row of beds among a score of other 
 human wrecks, a little old man, bent and haggard, 
 but with some of the dignity, I fancied, of his noble 
 descent upon his white and wrinkled brow. He 
 sat up in bed, propped by pillows, and listened with 
 hungry eyes as, in French which I had most care- 
 fully polished up for the occasion, I told him my 
 errand. When at last I paused, waiting anxiously 
 for an answer, he laid one trembling hand on 
 mine — I noticed that the other hung limp from 
 the shoulder — and made, as it seemed, a superhu- 
 man effort to speak; but only inarticulate, pitiful 
 sounds came forth. I looked appealingly at the 
 doctor. 
 
 " Dumb," he said, and shook his head. " Paraly- 
 sis involving the vocal organs. He will never speak 
 again." 
 
228 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 And he didn't. He was buried in the Potter's 
 Field the next week. For once I was too late. 
 The story of the last of my barons remains untold 
 until this hour. 
 
 And now that this chapter, somewhat against 
 my planning, has become wholly the police report- 
 er's, I shall have to bring up my cause c&lebre, 
 though that came a long while after my getting into 
 Mulberry Street. I shall not have so good an op- 
 portunity again. It was the occasion of the last of 
 my many battles for the mastery; but, more than 
 that, it illustrates very well that which I have been 
 trying to describe as a reporter's public function. 
 We had been for months in dread of a cholera 
 scourge that summer, when, mousing about the 
 Health Department one day, I picked up the weekly 
 analysis of the Croton water and noticed that there 
 had been for two weeks past " a trace of nitrites " 
 in the water. I asked the department chemist what 
 it was. He gave an evasive answer, and my curios- 
 ity was at once aroused. There must be no un- 
 known or doubtful ingredient in the water supply 
 of a city of two million souls. Like Caesar's wife, 
 it must be above suspicion. Within an hour I had 
 learned that the nitrites meant in fact that there 
 had been at one time sewage contamination ; con- 
 sequently that we were face to face with a most 
 grave problem. How had the water become pol- 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 229 
 
 luted, and who guaranteed that it was not in that 
 way even then, with the black death threatening to 
 cross the ocean from Europe ? 
 
 I sounded the warning in my paper, then the 
 Evening Sun, counselled the people to boil the 
 water pending further discoveries, then took my 
 camera and went up in the watershed. I spent a 
 week there, following to its source every stream 
 that discharged into the Croton River and photo- 
 graphing my evidence wherever I found it. When 
 I told my story in print, illustrated with the pic- 
 tures, the town was astounded. The Board of 
 Health sent inspectors to the watershed, who re- 
 ported that things were worse a great deal than I 
 had said. Populous towns sewered directl}' into 
 our drinking-water. There was not even a pre- 
 tence at decency. The people bathed and washed 
 their dogs in the streams. The public town dumps 
 were on their banks. The rival newspapers tried 
 to belittle the evil because their reporters were 
 beaten. Running water purifies itself, they said. 
 So it does, if it runs far enough and long enough. 
 I put that matter to the test. Taking the case of 
 a town some sixty miles out of New York, one of 
 the worst offenders, I ascertained from the engineer 
 of the water-works how long it ordinarily took to 
 bring water from the Sodom reservoir just beyond, 
 down to the housekeepers' faucets in the city. Four 
 
230 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 days, I think it was. Then I went to the doctors 
 and asked them how many days a vigorous cholera 
 baciUus might Hve and muhiply in running water. 
 About seven, said they. My case was made. There 
 was needed but a single case of the dreaded scourge 
 in any one of a dozen towns or villages that were 
 on the line of travel from the harbor in which a half 
 score ships were under quarantine, to put the me- 
 tropolis at the mercy of an inconceivable calamity. 
 
 There was in all this no attempt at sensation. It 
 was simple fact, as- any one could see for himself. 
 The health inspectors' report clinched the matter. 
 The newspapers editorially abandoned their re- 
 porters to ridicule and their fate. The city had to 
 purchase a strip of land along the streams wide 
 enough to guard against direct pollution. It cost 
 millions of dollars, but it was the merest trifle 
 to what a cholera epidemic would have meant to 
 New York in loss of commercial prestige, let alone 
 human lives. The contention over that end of it 
 was transferred to Albany, where the politicians took 
 a hand. What is there they do not exploit ? Years 
 after, meeting one of them who knew my share in 
 it, he asked me, with a wink and a confidential shove, 
 " how much I got out of it." When I told him 
 " nothing," I knew that upon my own statement he 
 took me for either a liar or a fool, the last being con- 
 siderably the worse of the two alternatives. 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 231 
 
 In all of this battlesome account I have said nothing 
 about the biggest fight of all. I had that with my- 
 self. In the years that had passed I had never for- 
 gotten the sergeant in the Church Street police 
 station, and my dog. It is the kind of thing you 
 do not get over. Way back in my mind there was 
 the secret thought, the day I went up to Mulberry 
 Street, that my time was coming at last. And now it 
 had come. I had a recognized place at Headquarters, 
 and place in the police world means power, more or 
 less. The backing of the Tribune had given me 
 influence. More I had conquered myself in my 
 fights with the police. Enough for revenge ! At 
 the thought I flushed with anger. It has power yet 
 to make my blood boil, the thought of that night in 
 the station-house. 
 
 It was then my great temptation came. No 
 doubt the sergeant was still there. If not, I could 
 find him. I knew the day and hour when it hap- 
 pened. They were burned into my brain. I had 
 only to turn to the department records to find out 
 who made out the returns on that October morning 
 while I was walking the weary length of the trestle- 
 work bridge across Raritan Bay, to have him 
 within reach. There were a hundred ways in which 
 I could hound him then, out of place and pay, even 
 as he had driven me forth from the last poor shelter 
 and caused my only friend to be killed. 
 
232 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Speak not to me of the sweetness of revenge ! Of 
 all unhappy mortals the vengeful man must be the 
 most wretched. I suffered more in the anticipation 
 of mine than ever I had when smarting under the 
 injury, grievous as the memory of it is to me even 
 now. Day after day I went across the street to begin 
 the search. For hours I lingered about the record 
 clerk's room where they kept the old station-house 
 blotters, unable to tear myself away. Once I even 
 had the one from Church Street of October, 1870, 
 in my hands ; but I did not open it. Even as I 
 held it I saw another and a better way. I would 
 kill the abuse, not the man who was but the instru- 
 ment and the victim of it. For never was parody 
 upon Christian charity more corrupting to human 
 mind and soul than the frightful abomination of the 
 police lodging-house, sole provision made by the 
 municipality for its homeless wanderers. Within a 
 year I have seen the process in full operation in 
 Chicago, have heard a sergeant in the Harrison 
 Street Station there tell me, when my indignation 
 found vent in angry words, that they "cared less for 
 those men and women than for the cur dogs in the 
 street." Exactly so ! My sergeant was of the 
 same stamp. Those dens, daily association with 
 them, had stamped him. Then and there I resolved 
 to wipe them out, bodily, if God gave me health and 
 strength. And I put the book away quick and 
 
LIFE IN MULBERRY STREET 233 
 
 never saw it again. I do not know till this day 
 who the sergeant was, and I am glad I do not. It 
 is better so. . 
 
 Of what I did to carry out my purpose, and how it 
 was done, I must tell hereafter. It was the source 
 and beginning of all the work which justifies the 
 writing of these pages ; and among all the things 
 which I have been credited with doing since it is 
 one of the few in which I really bore a strong hand. 
 And yet it was not mine which finally wrought that 
 great work, but a stronger and better than mine, 
 Theodore Roosevelt's. Even while I was writing this 
 account we together drove in the last nail in the cof- 
 fin of the bad old days, by persuading the Charter 
 Revision Commission to remove from the organic 
 law of the city the clause giving to the police the 
 care of vagrants, which was the cause of it all. It 
 had remained over in the Charter of the Greater 
 New York in spite of our protests. It was never 
 the proper business of the police to dispense charity. 
 They have their hands full with repressing crime. 
 It is the mixing of the two that confuses standards 
 and makes trouble without end for those who re- 
 ceive the "charity," and even more for those who 
 dispense it. You cannot pervert the first and finest 
 of human instincts without corrupting men : witness 
 my sergeant in Church Street and his Chicago 
 brother. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 MY DOG IS AVENGED 
 
 The lilacs blossom under my window, as I begin 
 this chapter, and the bees are humming among 
 them ; the sweet smell of wild cherry comes up from 
 the garden where the sunlight lies upon the young 
 grass. Robin and oriole call to their mates in the 
 trees. There upon the lawn is Elisabeth tending 
 some linen laid out to dry. Her form is as lithe 
 and her step as light as in the days I have written 
 about, grandmother as she is. I can see, though 
 her back is turned,- the look of affectionate pride 
 with which she surveys our home, for I know well 
 enough what she is thinking of. And so it has 
 been ; a blessed, good home ; how could it help 
 being that with her in it ? They say it" is a sign 
 one is growing old when one's thoughts dwell much 
 on the past. Perhaps with me it is only a sign that 
 the printers are on the war-path. Often when I 
 hear her sing with the children my mind wanders 
 back to the long winter evenings in those early 
 years when she sat listening late for my step. She 
 sang then to keep up her courage. My work in 
 
 234 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 235 
 
 Mulberry Street was at night, and she was much 
 alone, even as I was, fighting my battles there. 
 She had it out with the homesickness then, and I 
 think hers was a good deal the harder fight. I had 
 the enemy all in front where I could see to whack 
 him. But so we found ourselves and each other, 
 and it was worth all it cost. 
 
 Except in the short winter days it was always 
 broad daylight when I came home from work. My 
 route from the office lay through the Fourth and 
 the Sixth wards, the worst in the city, and for 
 years I walked every morning between two and 
 four o'clock the whole length of Mulberry Street, 
 through the Bend and across the Five Points down 
 to Fulton Ferry. There were cars on the Bowery, 
 but I liked to walk, for so I saw the slum when 
 off its guard. The instinct to pose is as strong 
 there as it is on F"ifth Avenue. It is a human im- 
 pulse, I suppose. We all like to be thought well 
 of by our fellows. But at 3 a.m. the veneering is 
 off and you see the true grain of a thing. So, also, 
 I got a picture of the Bend upon my mind which 
 so soon as I should be able to transfer it to that of 
 the community would help settle with that pig-sty 
 according to its deserts. It was not fit for Chris- 
 tian men and women, let alone innocent children, 
 to live in, and therefore it had to go. So with the 
 police lodging-rooms, some of the worst of which 
 
236 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 were right there, at the Mulberry Street Station 
 and around the corner in Elizabeth Street. The 
 way of it never gave me any concern that I remem- 
 ber. That would open as soon as the ■ truth was 
 told. The trouble was that people did not know 
 and had no means of finding out for themselves. 
 But I had. Accordingly I went poking about 
 among the foul alleys and fouler tenements of the 
 Bend when they slept in their filth, sometimes with 
 the policeman on the beat, more often alone, sound- 
 ing the misery and the depravity of it to their depth. 
 I think a notion of the purpose of it all crept into 
 the office, even while I was only half aware of it 
 myself, for when, after a year's service at the police 
 office, I was taken with a longing for the open, as 
 it were,' and went to the city editor who had suc- 
 ceeded Mr. Shanks with the request that I be trans- 
 ferred to general work, he refused flatly. I had made 
 a good record as a police reporter, but it was not that. 
 
 " Go back and stay," he said. " Unless I am 
 much mistaken, you are finding something up there 
 that needs you. Wait and see." 
 
 And so for the second time I was turned back 
 to the task I wanted to shirk. Jonah was one of 
 us sure enough. Those who see only the whale 
 fail to catch the point in the most human story ever 
 told — a point, I am afraid, that has a special appli- 
 cation to most of us. 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 237 
 
 I have often been asked if such slumming is not 
 full of peril. No, not if you are there on business. 
 Mere sightseeing at such unseasonable hours might 
 easily be. But the man who is sober and minds 
 his own business — which presupposes that he has 
 business to mind there — runs no risk anywhere in 
 New York, by night or by day. Such a man will take 
 the other side of the street when he sees a gang 
 ahead spoiling for a fight, and where he does go 
 he will carry the quiet assumption of authority that 
 comes with the consciousness of a right to be where 
 he is. That usually settles it. There was perhaps 
 another factor in my case that helped. Whether 
 it was my slouch hat and my spectacles, or the fact 
 that I had been often called into requisition to help 
 an ambulance surgeon patch up an injured man, 
 the nickname " Doc " had somehow stuck to me, 
 and I was supposed by many to be a physician con- 
 nected with the Health Department. Doctors are 
 never molested in the slum. It does not know but 
 that its turn to need them is coming next. No 
 more was I. I can think of only two occasions in 
 more than twenty years of police reporting when I 
 was in actual peril, though once I was very badly 
 frightened. 
 
 One was when a cry of murder had lured me 
 down Crosby Street into a saloon on the corner of 
 Jersey Street, where the gang of the neighborhood 
 
238 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 had just stabbed the saloon-keeper in a drunken 
 brawl. He was lying in a chair surrounded by 
 shrieking women when I ran in. On the instant 
 the doors were slammed and barred behind me, and 
 I found myself on the battlefield with the battle rag- 
 ing unabated. Bottles were flying thick and fast, 
 and the bar was going to smash. As I bent over 
 the wounded man, I saw that he was done for. 
 The knife was even then sticking in his neck, its 
 point driven into the backbone. The instinct of 
 the reporter came uppermost, and as I pulled it out 
 and held it up in a pause of the fray, I asked in- 
 cautiously : — 
 
 " Whose knife is this ? " 
 
 A whiskey-bottle that shaved within an inch of 
 my head, followed by an angry oath, at once recalled 
 me to myself and showed me my role. 
 
 " You tend to your business, you infernal body- 
 snatcher, and let us run ours," ran the message, and 
 I understood. I called for bandages, a sponge, and 
 a basin, and acted the surgeon as well as I could, 
 trying to stanch the flow of blood, while the racket 
 rose and the women shrieked louder with each pass- 
 ing moment. Through the turmoil I strained every 
 nerve to catch the sound of policemen's tramp. It 
 was hardly three minutes' run to the station-house, 
 but time never dragged as it did then. Once I 
 thought relief had come ; but as I listened and 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 239 
 
 caught the wail of men being beaten in the street, 
 I smiled wickedly in the midst of my own troubles, 
 for the voices told me that my opponents from 
 headquarters, following on my track, had fallen 
 among thieves : half the gang were then outside. 
 At last, just as an empty keg knocked my patient 
 from his chair, the doors fell in with a crash ; the 
 reserves had come. Their clubs soon cleared the 
 air and relieved me of my involuntary task, with my 
 patient yet alive. 
 
 Another time, turning a corner in the small hours 
 of the morning, I came suddenly upon a gang of 
 drunken roughs ripe for mischief. The leader had 
 a long dirk-knife with which he playfully jabbed 
 me in the ribs, insolently demanding what I thought 
 of it. I seized him by the wrist with as calm a pre- 
 tence of considering the knife as I could summon 
 up, but really to prevent his cutting me. I felt the 
 point pricking through my clothes. 
 
 " About two inches longer than the law allows," 
 I said, sparring for time. " I think I will take 
 that." 
 
 I knew even as I said it that I had cast the die ; 
 he held my life in his hand. It was a simple ques- 
 tion of which was the stronger, and it was already 
 decided. Despite my utmost effort to stay it, the 
 point of the knife was piercing my skin. The gang 
 stood by, watching the silent struggle. I knew 
 
240 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 them — the Why-os, the worst cutthroats in the 
 city, charged with a dozen murders, and robberies 
 without end. A human life was to them, in the 
 mood they were in, worth as much as the dirt under 
 their feet, no more. At that instant, not six feet 
 behind their backs. Captain McCullagh — the same 
 who afterward became Chief — turned the corner 
 with his precinct detective. I gathered all my 
 strength and gave the ruffian's hand a mighty twist 
 that turned the knife aside. I held it out for 
 inspection. 
 
 " What do you think of it. Cap ? " 
 
 Four brawny fists scattered the gang to the winds 
 for an answer. The knife was left in my hand. 
 
 They gave me no time to get frightened. Once 
 when I really was scared, it was entirely my own 
 doing. And, furthermore, it served me right. It 
 was on a very hot July morning that, coming down 
 Mulberry Street, I saw a big gray cat sitting on a 
 beer-keg outside a corner saloon. It was fast asleep, 
 and snored so loudly that it aroused my anger. It 
 is bad enough to have a man snore, but a cat — ! 
 It was not to be borne. I hauled off with my cane 
 and gave the beast a most cruel and undeserved 
 blow to teach it better manners. The snoring was 
 smothered in a yell, the cat came down from the 
 keg, and to my horror there rose from behind the 
 corner an angry Celt swearing a blue streak. He 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 241 
 
 seemed to my anguished gaze at least nine feet tall. 
 He had been asleep at his own door when my blow 
 aroused him, and it was his stocking feet, propped 
 up on the keg as he dozed in his chair around the 
 corner, I had mistaken for a gray cat. It was not a 
 time for explanations. I did the only thing there 
 was to be done ; I ran. Far and fast did I run. It 
 was my good luck that his smarting feet kept him 
 from following, or I might not have lived to tell this 
 tale. As I said, it served me right. Perhaps it is 
 in the way of reparation that I now support twelve 
 cats upon my premises. Three of them are clawing 
 at my study door this minute demanding to be let 
 in. But I cannot even claim the poor merit of pro- 
 viding for them. It is my daughter who runs the 
 cats ; I merely growl at and feed them. 
 
 The mention of Bowery night cars brings to my 
 mind an episode of that time which was thoroughly 
 characteristic of the "highway that never sleeps." 
 I was on the way down town in one, with a single 
 fellow-passenger who was asleep just inside the 
 door, his head nodding with every jolt as though 
 it were in danger of coming off. At Grand Street 
 a German boarded the car and proffered a bad half- 
 dollar in payment of his fare. The conductor bit it 
 and gave it back with a grunt of contempt. The 
 German fell into a state of excitement at once. 
 
 ■"Vat!" he shouted, "it vas pad?" and slapped 
 
242 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the coin down on the wooden seat with all his 
 might, that we might hear the ring. It rebounded 
 with a long slant and fell into the lap of the sleep- 
 ing passenger, who instantly woke up, grabbed 
 the half-dollar, and vanished through the door and 
 into the darkness, without as much as looking 
 around, followed by the desolate howl of the de- 
 spoiled German : — 
 
 " Himmel ! One United Shdades half-dollar clean 
 gone ! " 
 
 The time came at length when I exchanged night 
 work for day work, and I was not sorry. A new 
 life began for me, with greatly enlarged opportuni- 
 ties. I had been absorbing impressions up till then. 
 I met men now in whose companionship they began 
 to crystallize, to form into definite convictions ; men 
 of learning, of sympathy, and of power. My eggs 
 hatched. From that time dates my friendship, 
 priceless to me, with Dr. Roger S. Tracy, then a 
 sanitary inspector in the Health Department, later 
 its distinguished statistician, to whom I owe pretty 
 much all the understanding I have ever had of the 
 problems I have battled with ; for he is very wise, 
 while I am rather dull of wit. But directly I get 
 talking things over with him, I brighten right up. 
 I met Professor Charles F- Chandler, Major Willard 
 Bullard, Dr. Edward H. Janes — men to whose 
 practical wisdom and patient labors in the shaping 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 
 
 243 
 
 of the Health Department's work the metropolis 
 owes a greater debt than it is aware of ; Dr. John 
 T. Nagle, whose friendly camera later on gave me 
 some invaluable lessons; and General Ely Parker, 
 Chief of the Six 
 Nations. 
 
 I suppose it was 
 the fact that he 
 was an Indian that 
 first attracted me 
 to him. As the 
 years passed we be- 
 came great friends, 
 and I loved noth- 
 ing better in an 
 idle hour than to 
 smoke a pipe with 
 the General in his 
 poky little office at 
 
 Police Headquar- Dr- Roger S. Tracy. 
 
 ters. That was about all there was to it, too, for he 
 rarely opened his mouth except to grunt approval of 
 something I was saying. When, once in a while, it 
 would happen that some of his people came down 
 from the Reservation or from Canada, the powwow 
 that ensued was my dear delight. Three pipes and 
 about eleven grunts made up the whole of it, but 
 it was none the less entirely friendly and satisfactory. 
 
244 THE xMAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 We all have our own ways of doing things, and that 
 was theirs. He was a noble old fellow. His title was 
 no trumpery show, either. It was fairly earned on 
 more than one bloody field with Grant's army. 
 Parker was Grant's military secretary, and wrote 
 the original draft of the surrender at Appomattox, 
 which he kept to his death with great pride. It 
 was not General Parker, however, but Donehogawa, 
 Chief of the Senecas and of the remnant of the 
 once powerful Six Nations, and guardian of the 
 western door of the council lodge, that appealed 
 to me, who in my boyhood had lived with Leather- 
 stocking and with Uncas and Chingachgook. They 
 had something to do with my coming here, and at 
 last I had for a friend one of their kin. I think he 
 felt the bond of sympathy between us and prized it, 
 for he showed me in many silent ways that he was 
 fond of me. There was about him an infinite 
 pathos, penned up there in his old age among the 
 tenements of Mulberry Street on the pay of a 
 second-rate clerk, that never ceased to appeal to 
 me. When he lay dead, stricken like the soldier he 
 was at his post, some letters of his to Mrs. Harriet 
 Converse, the adopted child of his tribe, went to my 
 heart. They were addressed to her on her travels. 
 He was of the " wolf " tribe, she a " snipe." " From 
 the wolf to the wandering snipe," they ran. Even 
 in Mulberry Street he was a true son of the forest. 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 
 
 245 
 
 Perhaps the General's sympathies went out to 
 me as a fighter. The change of front from night 
 to day brought no let-up on hostilities in our camp ; 
 rather the reverse. For this there was good cause : 
 I had interfered with 
 long - cherished privi- 
 leges. I found the day 
 men coming to work 
 at all hours from ten 
 to twelve or even one 
 o'clock. I went on 
 duty at eight, and the 
 immediate result was 
 to compel all the others 
 to do the same. This _ , ^, „ , 
 
 General Ely Parker, 
 
 was a sore grievance, chief of the six Nations. 
 
 and was held against me for a long time. The 
 logical outcome of the war it provoked was to 
 stretch the day farther into the small hours. Be- 
 fore I left Mulberry Street the circuit had been 
 made. The watch now is kept up through the 
 twenty-four hours without interruption. Like its 
 neighbor the Bowery, Mulberry Street never sleeps. 
 There had been in 1879 an awakening of the 
 public conscience on the tenement-house question 
 which I had followed with interest, because it had 
 started in the churches that have always seemed to 
 me to be the right forum for such a discussion, on 
 
246 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 every ground, and most for their own sake and the 
 cause they stand for. But the awakening proved 
 more of a sleepy yawn than real — like a man 
 stretching himself in bed with half a mind to get 
 up. Five years later, in 1884, came the Tenement- 
 House Commission which first brought home to us 
 the fact that the people living in the tenements 
 were " better than the houses." That was a big 
 white milestone on a dreary road. From that time 
 on we hear of "souls" in the slum. The property 
 end of it had held the stage up till then, and in a 
 kind of self-defence, I suppose, we had had to for- 
 get that the people there had souls. Because you 
 couldn't very well count souls as chattels yielding 
 so much income to the owner: it would not be 
 polite toward the Lord, say. Sounds queer, but if 
 that was not the attitude I would like to know 
 what it was. The Commission met at Police 
 Headquarters, and I sat through all its sessions as 
 a reporter, and heard every word of the testimony, 
 which was more than some of the Commissioners 
 did. Mr. Ottendorfer and Mr. Drexel, the banker, 
 took many a quiet little nap when things were dull. 
 One man the landlords, who had their innings to 
 the full, never caught off his guard. His clear, 
 incisive questions, that went through all subter- 
 fuges to the root of things, were sometimes like 
 flashes of lightning on a dark night discovering 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 247 
 
 the landscape far and near. He was Dr. Felix 
 Adler, whom I met there for the first time. The 
 passing years have given him a very warm place in 
 my heart. Adler was born a Jew. Often when I 
 think of the position the Christian Church took, or 
 rather did not take, on a matter so nearly concern- 
 ing it as the murder of the home in a tenement 
 population of a million souls, — for that was what it 
 came to, — I am reminded of a talk we had once in 
 Dr. Adler's study. I was going to Boston to speak 
 to a body of clergymen at their monthly dinner 
 meeting. He had shortly before received an invi- 
 tation to address the same body on " The Person- 
 ality of Christ," but had it in his mind not to go. 
 
 " What will you tell them.?" I asked. 
 
 The Doctor smiled a thoughtful little smile as he 
 said : " I shall tell them that the personality of Christ 
 is too sacred a subject for me to discuss at an 
 after-dinner meeting in a swell hotel." 
 
 Does that help you to understand that among the 
 strongest of moral forces in Christian New York 
 was and is Adler, the Jew or heretic, take it which- 
 ever way you please ? 
 
 Four years later the finishing touch was put to 
 the course I took with the Adler Tenement- House 
 Commission, when, toward the end of a three days' 
 session in Chickering Hall of ministers of every 
 sect who were concerned about the losing fight the 
 
248 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Church was waging among the masses, a man stood 
 in the meeting and cried out, " How are these men 
 and women to understand the love of God you speak 
 of, when they see only the greed of men ? " He was 
 a builder, Alfred T. White of Brooklyn, who had 
 proved the faith that was in him by building real 
 homes for the people, and had proved, too, that they 
 were a paying investment. It was just a question 
 whether a man would take seven per cent and save 
 his soul, or twenty-five and lose it. And I might as 
 well add here that it is the same story yet. All our 
 hopes for betterment, all our battling with the tene- 
 ment-house question, sum themselves up in the 
 effort, since there are men yet who would take 
 twenty-five per cent and run that risk, to compel 
 them to take seven and save their souls for them. 
 I wanted to jump up in my seat at that time and 
 shout Amen ! But I remembered that I was a re- 
 porter and kept still. It was that same winter, how- 
 ever, that I wrote the title of my book, " How the 
 Other Half Lives," and copyrighted it. The book 
 itself did not come until two years after, but it was 
 as good as written then. I had my text. 
 
 It was at that Chickering Hall meeting that I 
 heard the gospel preached to the poor in the only 
 way that will ever reach them. It was the last word 
 that was said, and I have always believed that it 
 was not exactly in the plan. I saw some venerable 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 249 
 
 brethren on the platform, bishops among xhem, 
 wince when Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, rending some 
 eminently respectable platitudes to shreds and tat- 
 ters, cried out for personal service, loving touch, as 
 the key to it all : — 
 
 " What if, when the poor leper came to the Lord 
 to be healed, he had said to Peter, or some other 
 understrapper, ' Here, Peter, you go touch that fel- 
 low and I'll pay you for it ' ? Or what if the Lord, 
 when he came on earth, had come a day at a time 
 and brought his lunch with him, and had gone home 
 to heaven overnight ? Would the world ever have 
 come to call him brother? We have got to give, 
 not our old clothes, not our prayers. Those are 
 cheap. You can kneel down on a carpet and pray 
 where it is warm and comfortable. Not our soup — 
 that is sometimes very cheap. Not our money — a 
 stingy man will give money when he refuses to give 
 himself. Just so soon as a man feels that you sit 
 down alongside of him in loving sympathy with him, 
 notwithstanding his poor, notwithstanding his sick 
 and his debased, estate, just so soon you begin to 
 worm your way into the very warmest spot in his 
 life." 
 
 It was plain talk, but it was good. They whis- 
 pered afterward in the corners about the "lack of 
 discretion of that good man Parkhurst." A little 
 of that lack would go a long way toward cleaning 
 
2SO THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 up in New York — did go, not so many years after 
 Worse shocks than that were coming from the same 
 quarter to rattle the dry bones. 
 
 Long before that the " something that needed 
 me " in Mulberry Street had come. I was in a 
 death-grapple with my two enemies, the police lodg- 
 ing-room and the Bend. The Adler Commission 
 had proposed to " break the back " of the latter by 
 cutting Leonard Street through the middle of it — 
 an expedient that had been suggested forty years 
 before, when the Five Points around the corner 
 challenged the angry resentment of the community. 
 But no expedient would ever cover that case. The 
 whole slum had to go. A bill was introduced in 
 the Legislature to wipe it out bodily, and in 1888, 
 after four years of pulling and hauling, we had 
 spunked up enough to file maps for the " Mulberry 
 Bend Park." Blessed promise ! And it was kept, 
 if it did take a prodigious lot of effort, for right there 
 decency had to begin, or not at all. Go and look 
 at it to-day and see what it is like. 
 
 But that is another story. The other nuisance 
 came first. The first guns that I have any record 
 of were fired in my newspapers in 1883, and from 
 that time till Theodore Roosevelt shut up the vile 
 dens in 1895 ^^^ battle raged without intermission. 
 The guns I speak of were not the first that were 
 fired — they were the first I fired so far as I can 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 25 1 
 
 find. For qujte a generation before that there had 
 been protests and complaints from the poHce sur- 
 geons, the policemen themselves who hated to lodge 
 under one roof with tramps, from citizen bodies that 
 saw in the system an outrage upon Christian charity 
 and all decency, but all without producing any other 
 effect than spasmodic whitewashing and the ineffect- 
 ual turning on of the hose. Nothing short of boil- 
 ing water would have cleansed those dens. Nothing 
 else came of it, because stronger even than the self- 
 ish motive that exploits public office for private 
 gain is the deadly inertia in civic life which simply 
 means that we are all as lazy as things will let us be. 
 The older I get, the more patience I have with the 
 sinner, and the less with the lazy good-for-nothing 
 who is at the bottom of more than half the share of 
 the world's troubles. Give me the thief if need be, 
 but take the tramp away and lock him up at hard 
 labor until he is willing to fall in- line and take up 
 his end. The end he lets lie some one has got to 
 carry who already has enough. 
 
 I ran to earth at last one of the citizens' bodies 
 that were striving with the nuisance, and went and 
 joined it. I will not say that I was received gra- 
 ciously. I was a reporter, and it was human nature 
 to assume that I was merely after a sensation ; and 
 I did make a sensation of the campaign. That was 
 the way to put life into it. Page after page I 
 
252 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 printed, now in this paper, now in that, and when 
 the round was completed, went over the same road 
 again. They winced a bit, my associates, but bore 
 it, egged me on even. Anything for a change. 
 Perchance it might help. It didn't then. But 
 slowly something began to stir. The editors found 
 something to be indignant about when there was 
 nothing else. Ponderous leaders about our "duty 
 toward the poor" appeared at intervals. The Grand 
 Jury on its tours saw and protested. The City Hall 
 felt the sting and squirmed. I remember when we 
 went to argue with the Board of Estimate and Ap- 
 portionment under Mayor Grant. It was my first 
 meeting with Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell and 
 John Finley, but not the last by a good many, thank 
 God for that ! I had gone to Boston to see the 
 humane way in which they were dealing with their 
 homeless there. They gave them a clean shirt and 
 a decent bed and- a bath — good way, that, to limit 
 the supply of tramps — and something to eat in the 
 morning, so they did not have to go out and beg the 
 first thing. It seemed good to me, and it was good. 
 But the Mayor did not think so. 
 
 " Boston ! Boston ! " he cried, impatiently, and 
 waved us and the subject aside. " I am tired of 
 hearing always how they do in Boston, and of the 
 whole matter." 
 
 So were we, tired enough to keep it up. We 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 253 
 
 came back next time, though it didn't do any good, 
 and meanwhile the newspaper broadsides continued. 
 No chance was allowed to pass of telling the people 
 of New York what they were harboring. They 
 simply needed to know, I felt sure of that. And I 
 know now that I was right. But it takes a lot of 
 telling to make a city know when it is doing wrong. 
 However, that was what I was there for. When it 
 didn't seem to help, I would go and look at a stone- 
 cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hun- 
 dred times without as much as a crack showing in 
 it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split 
 in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, 
 but all that had gone before together. When my 
 fellow-workers smiled, I used to remind them of the 
 Israelites that marched seven times around Jericho 
 and blew their horns before the walls fell. 
 
 " Well, you go ahead and blow yours," they said ; 
 "you have the faith." 
 
 And I did, and the walls did fall, though it took 
 nearly twice seven years. But they came down, as 
 the walls of ignorance and indifference must every 
 time, if you blow hard enough and long enough, 
 with faith in your cause and in your fellow-man. It 
 is just a question of endurance. If you keep it up, 
 they can't. 
 
 They began to give, those grim walls, when typhus 
 fever broke out in the city in the winter of 1891-92. 
 
254 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 The wonder was that it did not immediately centre 
 in the police lodging-rooms. There they lay, young 
 and old, hardened tramps and young castaways with 
 minds and souls soft as wax for their foulness to be 
 stamped upon,^ on bare floors of stone or planks. 
 
 The Lodging-room at the Leonard Street Pohce Station. 
 
 Dirty as they came in from every vile contact, they 
 went out in the morning to scatter from door to 
 
 ' The old cry of sensation mongering was raised more than once 
 when I was making my charges. People do not lilce to have their rest 
 disturbed. Particularly did the critics object to the statement that there 
 were young people in the dens ; they were all old tramps, they said. 
 For an answer I went in and photographed the boys and girls one 
 night, and held their pictures up before the community. In the Oak 
 Street Station alone, one of the vilest, there were six as likely young 
 fellows as I ever saw, herded with forty tramps and thieves. Not one 
 of them would come out unscathed. 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 255 
 
 door, where they begged their breakfast, the seeds 
 of festering disease. Turning the plank was " mak- 
 ing the bed." Typhus is a filth-disease, of all the 
 most dreaded. If ever it got a foothold in those 
 dens, there was good cause for fear. I drew up at 
 once a remonstrance, had it signed by representa- 
 tives of the united charitable societies — some of 
 them shrugged their shoulders, but they signed — 
 and took it to the Health Board. They knew the 
 danger better than I. But the time had not yet 
 come. Perhaps they thought, with the reporters, 
 that I was just "making copy." For I made a 
 " beat " of the story. Of course I did. We were 
 fighting; and if I could brace the boys up to the 
 point of running their own campaigns for making 
 things better, so much was gained. But they did 
 not take the hint. They just denounced my 
 " treachery." 
 
 I warned them that there would be trouble with 
 the lodging-rooms, and within eleven months the 
 prophecy came true. The typhus broke out there. 
 The night after the news had come I took my cam- 
 era and flashlight and made the round of the dens, 
 photographing them all with their crowds. Of the 
 negatives I had lantern-slides made, and with these 
 under my arm knocked at the doors of the Academy 
 of Medicine, demanding to be let in. That was the 
 place for that discussion, it seemed to me, for the 
 
2S6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 doctors knew the real extent of the peril we were 
 then facing. Typhus is no respecter of persons, 
 and it is impossible to guard against it as against the 
 smallpox. They let me in, and that night's doings 
 gave the cause of decency a big push. I think that 
 was the first time I told the real story of my dog. 
 I had always got around it somehow ; it choked me 
 even then, twenty years after and more, anger boiled 
 up in me so at the recollection. 
 
 We pleaded merely for the execution of a law 
 that had been on the statute-books six years and 
 over, permitting the city authorities to establish a 
 decent lodging-house ; but though the police, the 
 health officials, the grand jury, the charitable socie- 
 ties, and about everybody of any influence in the 
 community fell in behind the medical profession in 
 denouncing the evils that were, we pleaded in vain. 
 The Tammany officials at the City Hall told us in- 
 solently to go ahead and build lodging-houses our- 
 selves ; they had other things to use the city's 
 money for than to care for the homeless poor; 
 which, indeed, was true. The Charity Organization 
 Society that stood for all the rest gave up in dis- 
 couragement and announced its intention to start a 
 Wayfarer's Lodge itself, on the Boston plan, and 
 did so. " You see," was the good-by with which 
 my colaborers left me, " we will never succeed." 
 My campaign had collapsed. 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 257 
 
 But even then we were winning. Never was 
 defeat in all that time that did not in the end turn 
 out a step toward victory. This much the unceas- 
 ing agitation had effected, though its humane pur- 
 pose made no impression on the officials, that the 
 accommodation for lodgers in the station-houses 
 was sensibly shrunk. Where there had been forty 
 that took them in, there were barely two dozen left. 
 The demand for separate women's prisons with 
 police matrons in charge, which was one of the 
 phases the new demand for decency was assuming, 
 bred a scarcity of house-room, and one by one the 
 foul old dens were closed and not reopened. The 
 nuisance was perishing of itself. Each time a piece 
 of it sloughed off, I told the story again in print, 
 " lest we forget." In another year reform came, and 
 with it came Roosevelt. The Committee on Va- 
 grancy, a volunteer body of the Charity Organization 
 Society, of which Mrs. Lowell was the head and I a 
 member, unlimbered its guns again and opened fire, 
 and this time the walls came down. For Tammany 
 was out. 
 
 We had been looking the police over by night, 
 Roosevelt and I. We had inspected the lodging- 
 rooms while I went over the long fight with him, 
 and had come at last, at 2 a.m., to the Church Street 
 Station. It was raining outside. The light flick- 
 ered, cold and cheerless, in the green lamps as we 
 
2S8 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 went up the stone steps. Involuntarily I looked in 
 the corner for my little dog ; but it was not there, 
 or any one who remembered it. The sergeant 
 glanced over his blottej grimly; I had almost to 
 pinch myself to make sure I was not shivering in a 
 linen duster, wet to the skin. Down the cellar steps 
 
 The Church Street Station Lodging-room, in which I was robbed. 
 
 /to the men's lodging-room I led the President of the 
 Police Board. It was unchanged — just as it was 
 the day I slept there. Three men lay stretched at 
 full length on the dirty planks, two of them young 
 lads from the country. Standing there, I told Mr. 
 Roosevelt my own story. He turned alternately 
 red and white with anger as he heard it. 
 
 " Did they do that to you ? " he asked when I had 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 259 
 
 ended. For an answer I pointed to the young lads 
 then asleep before him. 
 
 " I was like this one," I said. 
 
 He struck his clenched fists together. " I will 
 smash them to-morrow." 
 
 He was as good as his word. The very next day 
 the Police Board took the matter up. Provision 
 was made for the homeless on a barge in the East 
 River until plans could be perfected for sifting the 
 tramps from the unfortunate ; and within a week, 
 on recommendation of the Chief of Police, orders 
 were issued to close the doors of the police lodging- 
 rooms on Febi^uary 15, 1S96, never again to be un- 
 barred. 
 
 The battle was won. The murder of my dog 
 was avenged, and forgiven, after twenty-five years. 
 The yellow newspapers, with the true instinct that 
 made them ever recognize in Roosevelt the impla- 
 cable enemy of all they stood for, jorinted cartoons 
 of homeless men shivering at a barred door " closed 
 by order of T. Roosevelt " ; but they did not, after 
 all, understand the man they were attacking. That 
 the thing was right was enough for him. Their 
 shafts went wide of the mark, or fell harmless. The 
 tramps for whom New York had been a paradise 
 betook themselves to other towns not so discerning 
 — went to Chicago, where the same wicked system 
 was in operation until last spring, is yet for all I 
 
26o THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 know — and the honestly homeless got a chance. 
 A few tender-hearted and soft-headed citizens, of 
 the kind who ever obstruct progress by getting 
 some very excellent but vagrant impulses mixed 
 up with a lack of common sense, wasted their sym- 
 pathy upon the departing hobo, but soon tired of it. 
 I remember the case of one tramp whose beat was 
 in the block in Thirty-fifth Street in which Dr. 
 Parkhurst lives. He was arrested for insolence to 
 a housekeeper who refused him food. The magis- 
 trate discharged him, with some tearful remarks 
 about the world's cruelty and the right of a man 
 to be poor without being accounted a criminal. 
 Thus encouraged, the tramp went right back and 
 broke the windows of the house that had repelled 
 him. I presume he is now in the city by the 
 lake holding up people who offend him by being 
 more industrious and consequently more prosper- 
 ous than he. 
 
 For the general results of the victory so labori- 
 ously achieved I must refer to " A Ten Years' 
 War," in which I endeavored to sum up the situa- 
 tion as I saw it. They are not worked out yet to 
 the full. The most important link is missing. 
 That is to be a farm-school which shall sift the 
 young idler from the heap of chaff, and win him 
 back to habits of industry and to the world of men. 
 It will come when moral purpose has been reestab- 
 
MY DOG IS AVENGED 
 
 261 
 
 lished at the City Hall. I have not set out here to 
 discuss reform and its merits, but merely to point 
 out that the way of it, the best way of bringing it 
 on — indeed, the only way that is always open — is 
 to make the facts of the wrong plain. And, having 
 said that, I have put the reporter where he belongs 
 and answered the 
 question why I have 
 never wanted execu- 
 tive office and never 
 will. 
 
 And now, in tak- 
 ing leave of this sub- 
 ject, of which I hope 
 I may never hear 
 again, for it has 
 plagued me enough 
 and had its full share 
 of my life, is there 
 not one ray of bright- 
 ness that falls athwart its gloom? Were they all 
 bad, those dens I hated, yes, hated, with the shame 
 and the sorrow and hopeless surrender they stood 
 for? Was there not one glimpse of mercy that 
 dwells in the memory with redeeming touch ? Yes, 
 one. Let it stand as testimony that on the brink 
 of hell itself human nature is not wholly lost. There 
 is still the spark of His image, however overlaid by 
 
 The Yellow Newspapers' Contribution. 
 
262 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the slum. And let it forever wipe out the score of 
 my dog, and mine. It was in one of the worst that 
 I came upon a young girl, pretty, innocent — Heaven 
 knows how she had landed there. She hid her head 
 in her apron and wept bitterly with the shame of 
 the thing. Around her half a dozen old hags, rum- 
 sodden and foul, camped on the stone floor. As in 
 passing I stooped over the weeping girl, one of 
 them, thinking I was one of the men about the 
 place, and misunderstanding my purpose, sprang 
 between us like a tigress and pushed me back. 
 
 " Not her ! " she cried, and shook her fist at me ; 
 " not her! It is all right with us. We are old and 
 tough. But she is young, and don't you dare ! " 
 
 I went out and stood under the stars, and thanked 
 God that I was born. Only tramps ! It had been 
 dinned into my ears until I said it myself, God for- 
 give me ! Aye, that was what we had made of them 
 with our infernal machinery of rum-shop, tenement, 
 dive, and — this place. With Christian charity 
 instead, what might they not have been .? 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 
 
 If there be any to whom the travail through which 
 we have just come seems like a mighty tempest in a 
 teapot, let him quit thinking so. It was not a small 
 matter. To be sure, the wrong could have been 
 undone in a day by the authorities, had they been 
 so minded. That it was not undone was largely, 
 and illogically, because no one had a word to say in 
 its defence. When there are two sides to a thing, 
 it is not difficult to get at the right of it in an argu- 
 ment, and to carry public opinion for the right. But 
 when there is absolutely nothing to be said against 
 a proposed reform, it seems to be human nature — 
 American human nature, at all events — to expect 
 it to carry itself through with the general good 
 wishes but no particular lift from any one. It is a 
 very charming expression of our faith in the power 
 of the right to make its way, only it is all wrong : it 
 will not make its way in the generation that sits by 
 to see it move. It has got to be moved along, like 
 everything else in this world, by men. That is how 
 we take title to the name. That is what is the mat- 
 
 263 
 
264 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ter with half our dead-letter laws. The other half 
 were just still-born. It is so, at this moment, with 
 the children's playgrounds in New York. Probably 
 all thinking people subscribe to-day to the statement 
 that it is the business of the municipality to give its 
 children a chance to play, just as much as to give 
 them schools to go to. Everybody applauds it. 
 The authorities do not question it; but still they 
 do not provide playgrounds. Private charity has 
 to keep a beggarly half-dozen going where there 
 ought to be forty or fifty, as a matter of right, not 
 of charity. Call it official conservatism, inertia, 
 treachery, call it by soft names or hard; in the end' 
 it comes to this, I suppose, that it is the whetstone 
 upon which our purpose is sharpened, and in that 
 sense we have apparently got to be thankful for it. 
 So a man may pummel his adversary and accept 
 him as a means of grace at the same time. If 
 there were no §nags, there would be no wits to 
 clear them away, or strong arms to wield the axe. 
 It was the same story with the Mulberry Bend. 
 Until the tramp lodging-houses were closed, until 
 the Bend was gone, it seemed as if progress were 
 flat down impossible. As I said, decency had to 
 begin there, or not at all. 
 
 Before I tackle the Bend, perhaps I had better 
 explain how I came to take up photographing as 
 a — no, not exactly as a pastime. It was never that 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 
 
 265 
 
 The Mulberry Bend as it was. 
 
 with me. I had use for it, and beyond that I never 
 went. I am downright sorry to confess here that I 
 am no good at all as a photographer, for I would 
 Hke to be. The thing is a constant marvel to me, 
 and an unending delight. To watch the picture 
 come out upon the plate that was blank before, and 
 that saw with me for perhaps the merest fraction of 
 a second, maybe months before, the thing it has 
 never forgotten, is a new miracle every time. If I 
 were a clergyman I would practise photography and 
 preach about it. But I am jealous of the miracle. 
 I do not want it explained to me in terms of HO2 
 
266 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 or such like formulas, learned, but so hopelessly 
 unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on 
 a pin and put in a glass case. I want to see the 
 sunlight on its wings as it flits from flower to flower, 
 and I don't care a rap what its Latin name may be. 
 Anyway, it is not its name. The sun and the flower 
 and the butterfly know that. The man who sticks 
 a pin in it does not, and never will, for he knows 
 not its language. Only the poet does among men. 
 So, you see, I am disqualified from being a pho- 
 tographer. Also, I am clumsy, and impatient of 
 details. The axe was ever more to my liking than 
 the graving-tool. I have lived to see the day of the 
 axe and enjoy it, and now I rejoice in the coming of 
 the men and women who know ; the Jane Addamses, 
 who to heart add knowledge and training, and with 
 gentle hands bind up wounds which, alas ! too often 
 I struck. It is as it should be. I only wish they 
 would see it and leave me out for my sins. 
 
 But there ! I started out to tell about how I came 
 to be a photographer, and here I am, off on the sub- 
 ject of philanthropy and social settlements. To be 
 precise, then, I began taking pictures by proxy. It 
 was upon my midnight trips with the sanitary police 
 that the wish kept cropping up in me that there 
 were some way of putting before the people what 
 I saw there. A drawing might have done it, but 
 I cannot draw, never could. There are certain 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 267 
 
 sketches of mine now on record that always arouse 
 the boisterous hilarity of the family. They were 
 made for the instruction of our first baby in wolf- 
 lore, and I know they were highly appreciated by 
 him at the time. Maybe the fashion in wolves has 
 changed since. But, anyway, a drawing would not 
 have been evidence of the kind I wanted. We used 
 to go in the small hours of the morning into the 
 worst tenements to count noses and see if the law 
 against overcrowding was violated, and the sights I 
 saw there gripped my heart until I felt that I must 
 tell of them, or burst, or turn anarchist, or some- 
 thing. " A man may be a man even in a palace " 
 in modern New York as in ancient Rome, but not 
 in a slum tenement. So it seemed to me, and in 
 anger I looked around for something to strike off 
 his fetters with. But there was nothing. 
 
 I wrote, but it seemed to make no impression. 
 One morning, scanning my newspaper at the break- 
 fast table, I put it down with an outcry that startled 
 my wife, sitting opposite. There it was, the thing 
 I had been looking for all those years. A four-line 
 despatch from somewhere in Germany, if I remem- 
 ber right, had it all. A way had been discovered, 
 it ran, to take pictures by flashlight. The darkest 
 corner might be photographed that way. I went 
 to the office full of the idea, and lost no time in 
 looking up Dr. John T. Nagle, at the time in charge 
 
268 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 of the Bureau of Vital Statistics in the Health De- 
 partment, to tell him of it. Dr. Nagle was an 
 amateur photographer of merit and a good fellow 
 besides, who entered into my plans with great readi- 
 ness. The news had already excited much interest 
 among New York photographers, professional and 
 otherwise, and no time was lost in communicating 
 with the other side. Within a fortnight a raiding 
 party composed of Dr. Henry G. PifTard and Rich- 
 ard Hoe Lawrence, two distinguished amateurs. Dr. 
 Nagle and myself, and sometimes a policeman or 
 two, invaded the East Side by night, bent on letting 
 in the light where it was so much needed. 
 
 At least that was my purpose. To the photog- 
 raphers it was a voyage of discovery of the great- 
 est interest ; but the interest centred in the camera 
 and' the flashlight. The police went along from 
 curiosity ; sometimes for protection. For that they 
 were hardly needed. It is not too much to say that 
 our party carried terror wherever it went. The 
 flashlight of those days was contained in cartridges 
 fired fi^om a revolver. The spectacle of half a dozen 
 strange men invading a house in the midnight hour 
 armed with big pistols which they shot off recklessly 
 was hardly reassuring, however sugary our speech, 
 and it was not to be wondered at if the tenants 
 bolted through windows and down fire-escapes 
 wherever we went. But as no one was murdered, 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 
 
 269 
 
 things calmed down after a while, though months 
 after I found the recollection of our visits hanging 
 over a Stanton Street block like a nightmare. We 
 got some good pictures; but very soon the slum and 
 the awkward hours palled upon the amateurs. I 
 found myself alone just when I needed help most. 
 
 "The tenants bolted through the windows." 
 
 I had made out by the flashlight possibilities my 
 companions little dreamed of. 
 
 I hired a professional photographer next whom I 
 found in dire straits. He was even less willing to 
 get up at 2 A.M. than my friends who had a good 
 excuse. He had none, for I paid him well. He 
 repaid me by trying to sell my photographs behind 
 my back. I had to replevin the negatives to get 
 
270 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 them away from him. He was a pious man, I take 
 it, for when I tried to have him photograph the 
 waifs in the baby nursery at the Five Points House 
 of Industry, as they were saying their " Now I lay 
 me down to sleep," and the plate came out blank 
 the second time, he owned up that it was his doing : 
 it went against his principles to take a picture of 
 any one at prayers. So I had to get another man 
 with some trouble and expense. But on the whole 
 I think the experience was worth what it cost. The 
 spectacle of a man prevented by religious scruples 
 from photographing children at prayers, while plot- 
 ting at the same time to rob his employer, has been 
 a kind of chart to me that has piloted me through 
 more than one quagmire of queer human nature. 
 Nothing could stump me after that. The man was 
 just as sincere in the matter of his scruple as he 
 was rascally in his business dealings with me. 
 
 There was at last but one way out of it ; namely, 
 for me to get a camera myself. This I did, and 
 with a dozen plates took myself up the Sound to 
 the Potter's Field on its desert island to make my 
 first observations. There at least I should be alone, 
 with no one to bother me. And I wanted a picture 
 of the open trench. I got it, too. When I say 
 that with the sunlight of a January day on the 
 white snow I exposed that extra-quick instantaneous 
 plate first for six seconds, then for twelve, to make 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 2/1 
 
 sure I got the picture/ and then put the plate-holder 
 back among the rest so that I did not know which 
 was which, amateur photographers will understand 
 the situation. I had to develop the whole twelve 
 to get one picture. That was so dark, almost black, 
 from over-exposure as to be almost hopeless. But 
 where there is life there is hope, if you can apply 
 that maxim to the Potter's Field, where there are 
 none but dead men. The very blackness of my 
 picture proved later on, when I came to use it with 
 a magic lantern, the taking feature of it. It added 
 a gloom to the show more realistic than any the 
 utmost art of professional skill might have attained. 
 So I became a photographer, after a fashion, and 
 thereafter took the pictures myself. I substituted 
 a frying-pan for the revolver, and flashed the light 
 on that. It seemed more homelike. But, as I said, 
 I am clumsy. Twice I set fire to the house with 
 the apparatus, and once to myself. I blew the light 
 into my own eyes on that occasion, and only my spec- 
 tacles saved me from being blinded for life. For 
 more than an hour after I could see nothing and 
 was led about by my companion, helpless. Photo- 
 graphing Joss in Chinatown nearly caused a riot 
 
 1 Men are ever prone to doubt what they cannot understand. With 
 all the accumulated information on the subject, even to this day, when 
 it comes to taking a snap-shot, at the last moment I weaken and take 
 it under protest, refusing to believe that it can be. A little more faith 
 would make a much better photographer of me. 
 
272 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 there. It seems that it was against their reh- 
 gious principles. Peace was made only upon ex- 
 press assurance being given the guardians of Joss 
 that his picture would be hung in the " gallery at 
 Police Headquarters." They took it as a compli- 
 ment. The " gallery " at Headquarters is the rogues' 
 gallery, not generally much desired. Those Chinese 
 are a queer lot, but when I remembered my Chris- 
 tian friend of the nursery I did not find it in me to 
 blame them. Once, when I was taking pictures 
 about Hell's Kitchen, I was confronted by a wild- 
 looking man with a club, who required me to sub- 
 scribe to a general condemnation of reporters as 
 '' hardly fit to be flayed alive," before he would let 
 me go ; the which I did with a right good will, 
 though with somewhat of a mental reservation in 
 favor of my rivals in Mulberry Street, who just then 
 stood in need of special correction. 
 
 What with one thing and another, and in spite of 
 all obstacles, I got my pictures, and put some of 
 them to practical use at once. I recall a midnight 
 expedition to the Mulberry Bend with the sanitary 
 police that had turned up a couple of characteristic 
 cases of overcrowding. In one instance two rooms 
 that should at most have held four or five sleepers 
 were found to contain fifteen, a week-old baby among 
 them. Most of them were lodgers and slept there 
 for " five cents a spot." There was no pretence of 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 
 
 273 
 
 beds. When the report was submitted to the 
 Health Board the next day, it did not make much 
 of an impression — these things rarely do, put in 
 mere words — until my negatives, still dripping from 
 
 Lodgers at Five Cents a Spot. 
 
 the dark-room, came to reenforce them. From them 
 there was no appeal. It was not the only instance 
 of the kind by a good many. Neither the landlord's 
 protests nor the tenant's plea " went " in face of the 
 camera's evidence, and I was satisfied. 
 
 I Iiad at last an ally in the fight with the Bend. 
 It was needed, worse even than in the campaign 
 against the police lodging-houses, for in that we 
 were a company ; in the Bend I was alone. From 
 
274 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the day — I think it was in the winter of 1886 — 
 when it was officially doomed to go by act of legis- 
 lature until it did go, nine years later, I cannot 
 remember that a cat stirred to urge it on. Whether 
 it was that it had been bad so long that people 
 thought it could not be otherwise, or because the 
 Five Points had taken all the reform the Sixth 
 Ward had coming to it, or because, by a sort of 
 tacit consent, the whole matter was left to me as 
 the recognized Mulberry Bend crank — whichever 
 it was, this last was the practical turn it took. I 
 was left to fight it out by myself. Which being so, 
 I laid in a stock of dry plates and buckled to. 
 
 The Bend was a much jollier adversary than the 
 police lodging-houses. It kicked back. It did not 
 have to be dragged into the discussion at intervals, 
 but crowded in unbidden. In the twenty years of 
 my acquaintance with it as a reporter I do not 
 believe there was a week in which it was not heard 
 from in the police reports, generally in connection 
 with a crime of violence, a murder or a stabbing 
 affray. It was usually on Sunday, when the Italians 
 who lived there were idle and quarrelled over their 
 cards. Every fight was the signal for at least two 
 more, sometimes a dozen, for they clung to their 
 traditions and met all efforts of the police to get at 
 the facts with their stubborn " fix him myself." And 
 when the detectives had given up in dismay and 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 275 
 
 the man who was cut had got out of the hospital, 
 pretty soon there was news of another fight, and 
 the feud had been sent on one step. By far the 
 most cheering testimony that our Italian is becom- 
 ing one of us came to me a year or two ago in the 
 evidence that on two occasions Mulberry Street had 
 refused to hide a murderer even in his own village/ 
 That was conclusive. It was not so in those days. 
 So, between the vendetta, the mafia, the ordinary 
 neighborhood feuds, and the Bend itself, always pic- 
 turesque if outrageously dirty, it was not hard to keep 
 it in the foreground. My scrap-book from the year 
 1883 to 1896 is one running comment on the Bend 
 and upon the official indolence that delayed its demo- 
 lition nearly a decade after it had been decreed. But 
 it all availed nothing to hurry up things, until, in a 
 swaggering moment, after four years of that sort of 
 thing, one of the City Hall officials condescended 
 to inform me of the real cause of the delay. It was 
 simply that " no one down there had been taking 
 any interest in the thing." 
 
 I could not have laid it out for him to suit my 
 case better than he did. It was in the silly season, 
 
 ■'The Italians here live usually grouped by "villages," that is, those 
 from the same community with the same patron saint keep close to- 
 ,'ether. The saint's name-day is their local holiday. If the police 
 want to find an Italian scamp, they find out first from what village he 
 hails, then it is a simple matter, usually, to find where he is located in 
 the city. 
 
276 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Bandits' Roost — a Mulberry Bend Alley. 
 
 and the newspapers fell greedily upon the sensation 
 I made. The Bend, moreover, smelled rather worse 
 than usual that August. They made " the people's 
 cause " their own, and shouted treason until the 
 commission charged with condemning the Bend 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 277 
 
 actually did meet and greased its wheels. But at 
 the next turn they were down in a rut again, and the 
 team had to be prodded some more. It had taken 
 two years to get a map of the proposed park filed 
 under the law that authorized the laying out of it. 
 The commission consumed nearly six years in con- 
 demning the forty-one lots of property, and charged 
 the city $45,498.60 for it. The Bend itself cost a 
 million, and an assessment of half a million was laid 
 upon surrounding property for the supposed benefit 
 of making it over from a pig-sty into a park. Those 
 property-owners knew better. They hired a lawyer 
 who in less than six weeks persuaded the Legisla- 
 ture that it was an injury, not a benefit. The town 
 had to foot the whole bill. But at last it owned the 
 Bend. 
 
 Instead of destroying it neck and crop, it settled 
 down complacently to collect the rents ; that is to 
 say, such rents as it could collect. A good many 
 of the tenants refused to pay, and lived rent free 
 for a year. It was a rare chance for the reporter, 
 and I did not miss it. The city as landlord in the 
 Bend was fair game. The old houses came down 
 at last, and for a twelvemonth, while a reform gov- 
 ernment sat at the City Hall, the three-acre lot lay, 
 a veritable slough of despond filled with unutter- 
 able nastiness, festering in the sight of men. No 
 amount of prodding seemed able to get it out of 
 
278 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 that, and all the while money given for the relief 
 of the people was going to waste at the rate of a 
 million dollars a year. The Small Parks Act of 
 1887 appropriated that amount, and it was to be 
 had for the asking. But no one who had the 
 authority asked, and as the appropriation was not 
 cumulative, each passing year saw the loss of just 
 so much to the cause of decency that was waiting 
 without. Eight millions had been thrown away 
 when they finally came to ask a million and a half 
 to pay for the Mulberry Bend park, and then they 
 had to get a special law and a special appropriation 
 because the amount was more than " a million in 
 one year." This in spite of the fact that we were 
 then in the Christmas holidays with one year just 
 closing and the other opening, each with its un- 
 claimed appropriation. I suggested that to the 
 powers that were, but they threw up their hands: 
 that would have been irregular and quite without 
 precedent. Oh, for irregularity enough to throttle 
 precedent finally and for good ! It has made more 
 mischief in the world, I verily believe, than all the 
 other lawbreakers together. At the very outset it 
 had wrecked my hopes of getting the first school 
 playground in New York planted in the Bend by 
 simply joining park and school together. There 
 was a public school in the block that went with the 
 rest. The Small Parks Law expressly provided for 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 
 
 279 
 
 the construction of " such and so many " buildings 
 for the comfort, health, and "instruction" of the 
 people, as might be necessary. But a school in a 
 park! The thing had never been heard of. It 
 would lead to conflict between two departments ! 
 And to this day there is no playground in the Mul- 
 berry Bend, though the school is right opposite. 
 
 Bottle Alley, Mulberry Bend. Headquarters of the Whyo Gang. 
 
 It was, nevertheless, that sort of thing that lent 
 the inspiration which in the end made the old Bend 
 go. It was when, in the midst of the discussion, 
 they showed me a check for three cents, hung up 
 and framed in the Comptroller's ofiEce as a kind of 
 
28o THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 red-tape joss for the clerks to kow-tow to, I suppose. 
 They were part of the system it glorified. The 
 three cents had miscarried in the purchase of a 
 school site, and, when the error was found, were 
 checked out with all the fuss and flourish of a 
 transaction in millions and at a cost, I was told, of 
 fifty dollars' worth of time and trouble. Therefore 
 it was hung up to be forever admired as the ripe 
 fruit of an infallible system. No doubt it will be 
 there when another Tweed has cleaned out the 
 city's treasury to the last cent. However, it sug- 
 gested a way out to me. Two could play at that 
 game. There is a familiar principle of sanitary 
 law, expressed in more than one ordinance, that 
 no citizen has a right to maintain a nuisance on his 
 premises because he is lazy or it suits his conven- 
 ience in other ways. The city is merely the aggre- 
 gate of citizens in a corporation, and must be 
 subject to the same rules. I drew up a complaint 
 in proper official phrase, charging that the state of 
 Mulberry Bend was " detrimental to health and 
 dangerous to life," and formally arraigned the muni- 
 cipality before the Health Board for maintaining a 
 nuisance upon its premises. 
 
 I have still a copy of that complaint, and, as the 
 parting shot to the worst slum that ever was, and, 
 let us hope, ever will be, I quote it here in part : — 
 
 " The Bend is a mass of wreck, a dumping-ground 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 281 
 
 for all manner of filth from the surrounding tene- 
 ments. The Street-cleaning Department has no 
 jurisdiction over it, and the Park Department, in 
 charge of which it is, exercises none. 
 
 " The numerous old cellars are a source of danger 
 to the children that swarm over the block. Water 
 stagnating in the holes will shortly add the peril of 
 epidemic disease. Such a condition as that now 
 prevailing in this block, with its dense surrounding 
 population, would not be tolerated by your depart- 
 ment for a single day if on private property. It 
 has lasted here many months. 
 
 " The property is owned by the city, having been 
 taken for the purposes of a park and left in this 
 condition after the demolition of the old buildings. 
 The undersigned respectfully represents that the 
 city, in the proposed Mulberry Bend park, is at 
 present maintaining a nuisance, and that it is the 
 duty of your honorable Board to see to it that it is 
 forthwith abolished, to which end he prays that you 
 will proceed at once with the enforcement of the 
 rules of your department prohibiting the maintain- 
 ing of nuisances within the city's limits." 
 
 If my complaint caused a smile in official quar- 
 ters, it was short-lived, except in the Sanitary 
 Bureau, where I fancy it lurked. For the Bend 
 was under its windows. One whiff of it was 
 enough to determine the kind of report the health 
 
282 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 inspectors would have to make when forced to act. 
 That night, before they got around, some boys 
 playing with a truck in the lots ran it down into 
 one of the cellar holes spoken of and were crushed 
 under it, and so put a point upon the matter that 
 took the laughter out of it for good. They went 
 ahead with the park then. 
 
 When they had laid the sod, and I came and 
 walked on it in defiance of the sign to " keep off 
 the grass," I was whacked by a policeman for doing 
 it, as I told in the " Ten Years' Wai." But that 
 was all right. We had the park. And I had been 
 " moved on " before when I sat and shivered in 
 reeking hallways in that veiy spot, alone and for- 
 lorn in the long ago; so that I did not mind. The 
 children who were dancing there in the sunlight 
 were to have a better time, please God ! We had 
 sciven them their lost chance. Lookins: at them 
 in their delight now, it is not hard to understand 
 what happened: the place that had been redolent 
 of crime and murder became the most orderly in 
 the city. When the last house was torn down in 
 the Bend, I counted seventeen murders in the 
 block all the details of which I remembered. No 
 doubt I had forgotten several times that number. 
 In the four years after that during which I re- 
 mained in Mulberry Street I was called only once 
 to record a deed of violence in the neighborhood. 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 
 
 283 
 
 and that was when a stranger came in and killed 
 himself. Nor had the Bend simply sloughed off 
 its wickedness, for it to lodge and take root in some 
 other place. That would have been something; 
 but it was not that. The Bend had become decent 
 and orderly because the sunlight was let in, and 
 
 Tlr", Mulberry Bend as it is. 
 
 shone upon children who had at last the right to 
 play, even if the sign " keep off the grass " was still 
 there. That was what the Mulberry Bend park 
 meant. It was the story it had to tell. And as 
 for the sign, we shall see the last of that yet. 
 The park has notice served upon it that its time 
 is up. 
 
284 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 So the Bend went, and mighty glad am I that I 
 had a hand in making it go. The newspapers puz- 
 zled over the fact that I was not invited to the 
 formal opening. I was Secretary of the Small 
 Parks Committee at the time, and presumably even 
 officially entitled to be bidden to the show; though, 
 come to think of it, our committee was a citizens' 
 affair and not on the pay-rolls ! The Tammany 
 Mayor who came in the year after said that we had 
 as much authority as " a committee of bootblacks " 
 about the City Hall, no more. So that it seems as 
 if there is a something that governs those things 
 which survives the accidents of politics, and which 
 mere citizens are not supposed to understand or 
 meddle with. Anyway, it was best so. Colonel 
 Waring, splendid fellow that he was, when he grew 
 tired of the much talk, made a little speech of ten 
 words that was not on the programme, and after 
 that the politicians went home, leaving the park to 
 the, children. There it was in the right hands. 
 What mattered the rest, then ? 
 
 And now let me go back from the slum to my 
 Brooklyn home for just a look. I did every night, 
 or I do not think I could have stood it. , I never 
 lived in New York since I had a home, except for 
 the briefest spell of a couple of months once when 
 my family were away, and that nearly stifled me. 
 I have to be where there are trees and birds and 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 285 
 
 green hills, and where the sky is blue above. So 
 we built our nest in Brooklyn, on the outskirts of 
 the great park, while the fledglings grew, and the 
 nest was full when the last of our little pile had 
 gone to make it snug. Rent was getting higher 
 all the time, and the deeper I burrowed in the 
 slum, the more my thoughts turned, by a sort 
 of defensive instinct, to the country. My wife 
 laughed, and said I should have thought of that 
 while we yet had some money to buy or build 
 with, but I borrowed no trouble on that score. I 
 was never a good business man, as I have said be- 
 fore, and yet — no ! I will take that back. It is 
 going back on the record. I trusted my accounts 
 with the Great Paymaster, who has all the money 
 there is, and he never gave notice that I had over- 
 drawn my account. I had the feeling, and have it 
 still, that if you are trying to do the things which 
 are right, and which you were put here to do, youi 
 can and ought to leave ways and means to Him' 
 who drew the plans, after you have done your own 
 level best to provide. Always that, of course. If 
 then things don't come out right, it is the best 
 proof in the world, to my mind,, that you have 
 got it wrong, and you have only to hammer away 
 waiting for things to shape themselves, as they are 
 bound to do, and let in the light. For nothing in 
 all this world is without a purpose, and least of all 
 
 / 
 
286 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 what you and I are doing, though we may not be 
 able to make it out. I got that faith from my 
 mother, and it never put her to shame, so she has 
 often told me. 
 
 Neither did it me. It was in the winter when 
 all our children had the scarlet fever that one Sun- 
 day, when I was taking a long walk out on Long 
 Island where I could do no one any harm, I came 
 upon Richmond Hill, and thought it was the most 
 beautiful spot I had ever seen. I went home and 
 told my wife that I had "found the place where we 
 were going to live, and that sick-room was filled 
 with the scent of spring flowers and of balsam and 
 pine as the children listened and cheered with their 
 feeble little voices. The very next week I picked 
 out the lots I wanted. There was a tangle of trees 
 growing on them that are shading my study win- 
 dow now as I write. I did not have any money, 
 but right then an insurance company was in need 
 of some one to revise its Danish policies, and my 
 old friend General C. T. Christensen thought I 
 would do. And I did it, and earned $200; where- 
 upon Edward Wells, who was then a prosperous 
 druggist, offered to lend me what more I needed 
 to buy the lots, and the manager of our Press 
 Bureau built me a house and took a mortgage for 
 all it cost. So before the next winter's snows we 
 were snug in the house that has been ours ever 
 

 J 
 
 My Little Ones gathering Daisies for "the Poors." 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 287 
 
 since, with a ridge of wooded hills, the " backbone 
 of Long Island," between New York and us. The 
 very lights of the city were shut out. So was the 
 slum, and I could sleep. 
 
 Fifteen summers have passed since. The house 
 lies yonder, white and peaceful under the trees. 
 Long since, the last dollar of the mortgage was 
 paid and our home freed from debt.^ The flag flies 
 from it on Sundays in token thereof. Joy and sor- 
 row have come to us under its roof. Children have 
 been born, and one we carried over the hill to the 
 churchyard with tears for the baby we had lost. 
 But He to whom we gave it back has turned our 
 grief to joy. Of all our babies, the one we lost is 
 the only one we have kept. The others grew out 
 of our arms ; I hardly remember them in their little 
 white slips. But he is our baby forever. Fifteen 
 happy years of peace have they been, for love held 
 the course. 
 
 It was when the daisies bloomed in the spring 
 that the children brought in armfuls from the fields, 
 and bade me take them to " the poors " in the city, 
 I did as they bade me, but I never got more than 
 half a block from the ferry with my burden. The 
 street children went wild over the "posies." They 
 
 ^ I have had my study built on the back lawn so that I may always 
 have it before me, and have a quiet place at the same time, where 
 "papa is not to be disturbed." But, though I put it as far back as I 
 could, I notice that they come right in. 
 
288 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 pleaded and fought to get near me, and when I had 
 no flowers left to give them sat in the gutter and 
 wept with grief. The sight of it went to my heart, 
 and I wrote this letter to the papers. It is dated in 
 my scrap-book June 23, 1888: — 
 
 " The trains that carry a hundred thousand peo- 
 ple to New York's stores and offices from their 
 homes in the country rush over fields, these bright 
 June mornings, glorious with daisies and clover 
 blossoms. There are too many sad little eyes in 
 the crowded tenements, where the sumrni^r sunshine 
 means disease and death, not play or vacation, that 
 will close without ever having looked upon a field 
 of daisies. 
 
 " If we cannot give them the fields, why not the 
 flowers ? If every man, woman, or child coming in 
 should, on the way to the depot, gather an armful of 
 wild flowers to distribute in the tenements, a mission 
 work would be set on foot with which all the alms- 
 giving of this wealthy city could not be compared. 
 
 " Then why not do it ? Ask your readers to try. 
 The pleasure of giving the flowers to the urchins 
 who will dog their steps in the street, crying with 
 hungry voices and hungry hearts for a ' posy,' will 
 more than pay for the trouble. It will brighten the 
 office, the store, or the schoolroom all through the 
 day. Let them have no fear that their gift will not 
 be appreciated because it costs nothing. Not alms, 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 
 
 but the golden rule, is what is needed in the tene- 
 ments of the poor. 
 
 " If those who have not the time or opportunity 
 themselves will send their flowers to 303 Mulberry 
 Street, opposite Police Headquarters, it will be done 
 for them. The summer doctors employed by the 
 Health Department to canvass the tenements in 
 July and August will gladly cooperate. Let us 
 have the flowers." 
 
 If I could have foreseen the result, I hardly think 
 that last paragraph would have been printed. I 
 meant to give people a chance to discover for them- 
 selves how much pleasure they could get out of a 
 little thing like taking an armful of flowers to town, 
 but they voted unanimously, so it seemed, to let me 
 have it all. Flowers came pouring in from every 
 corner of the compass. They came in boxes, in bar- 
 rels, and in bunches, from field and garden, from 
 town and country. Express-wagons carrying flow- 
 ers jammed Mulberry Street, and the police came 
 out to marvel at the row. The office was fairly 
 smothered in fragrance. A howling mob of children 
 besieged it. The reporters forgot their rivalries and 
 lent a hand with enthusiasm in giving out the flow- 
 ers. The Superintendent of Police detailed five 
 stout patrolmen to help carry the abundance to 
 points of convenient distribution. Wherever we 
 went, fretful babies stopped crying and smiled as 
 
ago THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the messengers of love were laid against their 
 wan cheeks. Slovenly women courtesied and made 
 way. 
 
 " The good Lord bless you," I heard as I passed 
 through a dark hall, " but you are a good man. No 
 such has come this way before." Oh ! the heartache 
 of it, and yet the joy ! The Italians in the Barracks 
 stopped quarrelling to help keep order. The worst 
 street became suddenly good and neighborly. A 
 year or two after, Father John Tabb, priest and 
 poet, wrote, upon reading my statement that I had 
 seen an armful of daisies keep the peace of a block 
 better than the policeman's club : — 
 
 Peacemakers ye, the daisies, from the soil 
 Upbreathing wordless messages of love, 
 
 Soothing of earth-born brethren the toil 
 And lifting e'en the lowliest above. 
 
 Ay, they did. The poet knew it ; the children 
 knew it ; the slum knew it. It lost its grip where 
 the fiowers went with their message. I saw it. 
 
 I saw, too, that I had put my hand to a task that 
 was too great for me, yet which I might not give 
 over, once I had taken it up. Every day the slum 
 showed me that more clearly. The hunger for the 
 beautiful that ^nawed at its heart was a constant 
 revelation. Those little ones at home were wiser 
 than I. At most I had made out its stomach. This 
 was like cutting windows for souls that were being 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 291 
 
 shrunk and dwarfed in their mean setting. Shut 
 them up once the sunlight had poured in — never ! 
 I could only drive ahead, then, until a way opened. 
 Somewhere beyond it was sure to do that. 
 
 And it did. Among the boxes from somewhere 
 out in Jersey came one with the letters I. H. N. on. 
 I paid little attention to it then, but when more came 
 so marked, I noticed that they were not all from one 
 place, and made inquiries as to what the letters 
 meant. So I was led to the King's Daughters' 
 headquarters, where I learned that they 
 stood for " In His Name." I liked the 
 sentiment ; I took to it at once. And 
 I liked the silver cross upon which it 
 was inscribed. I sometimes wish I had 
 lived — no! I do not. That's dream- 
 ing. I have lived in the best of all times, when 
 you do not have to dream things good, but can 
 help make them so. All the same, when I put 
 on the old crusader's cross which King Christian 
 sent me a year ago from Denmark, and think of 
 the valiant knights who wore it, I feel glad and 
 proud that, however far behind, I may ride in their 
 train. 
 
 So I put on the silver cross, and in the Broadway 
 Tabernacle spoke to the members of the order, asking 
 them to make this work theirs. They did it at once. 
 A committee was formed, and in the summer of 
 
'J 
 
 292 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 1890 it opened an office in the basement of the 
 Manners' Temple, down in the Fourth Ward. The 
 Health Department's summer doctors were enlisted, 
 and the work took a practical turn from the start. 
 There were fifty of the doctors, whose duty it was 
 to canvass the thirty thousand tenements during the 
 hot season and prescribe for the sick poor. They 
 had two months to do it in, and with the utmost 
 effort, if they were to cover their ground, could only 
 get around once to each family. In a great many 
 cases that was as good as nothing. They might as 
 well have stayed away, for what was wanted was ad- 
 vice, instruction, a friendly lift out of a hopeless rut, 
 more than medicine. We hired a nurse, and where 
 they pointed there she went, following their track 
 and bringing the things the doctor could not give. 
 It worked well. At the end of the year, when we 
 would have shut up shop, we found ourselves with 
 three hundred families on our hands, to leave whom 
 would have been rank treachery. So we took a 
 couple of rooms in a tenement, and held on.' And 
 from this small beginning has grown the King's 
 Daughters' settlement, which to-day occupies two 
 houses at 48 and 50 Henry Street, doing exactly the 
 same kind of work as when they began in the next 
 block. The flowers were and are the open sesame 
 to every home. They were laughed at by some at 
 the start ; but that was because they did not know. 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 293 
 
 They are not needed now to open doors ; the Httle 
 cross is known for a friend wherever it goes. 
 
 We sometimes hear it said, and it is true, that the 
 poor are more charitable among themselves than 
 the outside world is to them. It is because they 
 know the want ; and it only goes to prove that 
 human nature is at bottom good, not bad. In real 
 straits it comes out strongest. So, if you can only 
 make the others see, will they do. The trouble is, 
 they do not know, and some of us seem to have 
 cotton in our ears : we are a little hard of hearing. 
 Yet, whenever we put it to the test, up-town rang 
 true. I remember the widow with three or four 
 little ones who had to be wheeled if she were to be 
 able to get about as the doctor insisted. There was 
 no nursery within reach. And I remember the pro- 
 cession of baby-carriages that answered our appeal. 
 It strung clear across the street into Chatham 
 Square. Whatever we needed we got. We saw 
 the great heart of our city, and it was good to see. 
 
 Personally I had little to do with it, except to 
 form the link with the official end of it, the summer 
 doctors, etc., and to make trouble occasionally. As, 
 for instance, when I surreptitiously supplied an old 
 couple we had charge of with plug tobacco. The 
 ladies took it ill, but, then, they had never smoked. 
 I had, and I know what it is to do without tobacco, 
 for the doctor cut my supply off a long while ago. 
 
294 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Those two were old, very old, and they wanted 
 their pipe, and they got it. I suppose it was irregu- 
 lar, but I might as well say it here that I would do 
 the same thing again, without doubt. I feel it in 
 my bones. So little have I profited. But, good 
 land ! a pipe is not a deadly sin. For the rest, I 
 was mighty glad to see things managed with system. 
 It was a new experience to me. On the Tribune I 
 had a kind of license to appeal now and again for 
 some poor family I had come across, and sometimes 
 a good deal of money came in. It was hateful to 
 find that it did not always do the good it ought to. 
 I bring to mind the aged bookkeeper and his wife 
 whom I found in a Greene Street attic in a state of 
 horrid want. He had seen much better days, and 
 it was altogether a very pitiful case. My appeal 
 brought in over $300, which, in my delight, I 
 brought him in a lump. The next morning, when 
 going home at three o'clock, whom should I see in 
 a vile Chatham Street dive, gloriously drunk, and 
 in the clutches of a gang of Sixth Ward cutthroats, 
 but my protege, the bookkeeper, squandering money 
 right and left. I caught sight of him through the 
 open door, and in hot indignation went in and 
 yanked him out, giving him a good talking to. 
 The gang followed, and began hostilities at once. 
 But for the providential coming of two policemen, 
 we should probably have both fared ill. I had the 
 
THE BEND IS LAID BY THE HEELS 295 
 
 old man locked up in the Oak Street Station. For 
 a wonder, he had most of the money yet, and there- 
 after I spent it for him. 
 
 On another occasion we were deliberately victim- 
 ized — the reporters in Mulberry Street, I mean — 
 by a man with a pitiful story of hardship, which we 
 took as truth and printed. When I got around 
 there the next morning to see about it, I found that 
 some neighborhood roughs had established a toll- 
 gate in the alley, charging the pitying visitors who 
 came in shoals a quarter for admission to the show 
 in the garret. The man was a fraud. That was 
 right around the corner from a place where, years 
 before, I used to drop a nickel in a beggar woman's 
 hand night after night as I went past, because she 
 had a baby cradled on her wheezy little hand-organ, 
 until one night the baby rolled into the gutter, and 
 I saw that it was a rag baby, and that the woman 
 was drunk. It was on such evidence as this, both 
 as to them and myself, that I early pinned my faith 
 to organized charity as just orderly charity, and I 
 have found good reasons since to confirm me in the 
 choice. If any doubt had lingered in my mind, my 
 experience in helping distribute the relief fund to 
 the tornado sufferers at Woodhaven a dozen years 
 ago would have dispelled it. It does seem as if the 
 chance of getting something for nothing is, on the 
 whole, the greatest temptation one can hold out to 
 
296 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 frail human nature, whether in the slum, in Wall 
 Street, or out where the daisies grow. 
 
 Everything takes money. Our work takes a good 
 deal. It happened more than once, when the bills 
 came in, that there was nothing to pay them with. 
 Now these were times to put to the test my faith, as 
 recorded above. My associates in the Board will 
 bear me out that it was justified. It is true that the 
 strain was heavy once or twice. I recall one after- 
 noon, as do they, when we sat with bills amounting 
 to 1^150 before us and not a cent in the bank, so the 
 treasurer reported. Even as she did, the mail-carrier 
 brought two letters, both from the same town, as it 
 happened — Morristown, N.J. Each of them con- 
 tained a check for ^75, one from a happy mother 
 "in gratitude and joy," the other from "one stricken 
 by a great sorrow " that had darkened her life. To- 
 gether they made the sum needed. We sat and 
 looked at each other dumbly. To me it was not 
 strange : that was my mother's faith. But I do not 
 think we, any of us, doubted after that ; and we had 
 what we needed, as we needed it. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 I BECOME AN AUTHOR AND RESUME MV INTERRUPTED 
 CAREER AS A LECTURER 
 
 For more than a year I had knocked at the doors 
 of the various magazine editors with my pictures, pro- 
 posing to tell them how the other half lived, but no 
 one wanted to know. One of the Harpers, indeed, 
 took to the idea, but the editor to whom he sent me 
 treated me very cavalierly. Hearing that I had 
 taken the pictures myself, he proposed to buy them 
 at regular photographer's rates and " find a man 
 who could write " to tell the story. We did not 
 part with mutual expressions of esteem. I gave up 
 writing for a time then, and tried the church doors. 
 That which was bottled up within me was, perhaps, 
 getting a trifle too hot for pen and ink. In the 
 church one might, at all events, tell the truth un- 
 hindered. So I thought ; but there were cautious 
 souls there, too, who held the doors against Mul- 
 berry Street and the police reporter. It was fair, 
 of course, that they should know who I was, but I 
 thought it sufficient introduction that I was a 
 deacon in my own church out on Long Island. 
 
 297 
 
298 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 They did not, it seemed. My stock of patience, 
 never very large, was showing signs of giving out, 
 and I retorted hotly that then, if they wanted to 
 know, I was a reporter, and perhaps Mulberry Street 
 had as much sanctity in it as a church that would 
 not listen to its wrongs. They only shut the doors 
 a little tighter at that. It did not mend matters 
 that about that time I tried a little truth-telling in 
 my own fold and came to grief. It did not prpve 
 to be any more popular on Long Island than in 
 New York. I resigned the diaconate and was 
 thinking of hiring a hall — a theatre could be had 
 on Sunday — wherein to preach my lay sermon, 
 when I came across Dr. Schauffler, the manager 
 of the City Mission Society, and Dr. Josiah Strong, 
 the author of " Our Country." They happened to 
 be together, and saw at once the bearing of my 
 pictures. Remembering my early experience with 
 the magic lantern, I had had slides made from my 
 negatives, and on February 28, 1888, I told their 
 story in the Broadway Tabernacle. Thereafter 
 things mended somewhat. Plymouth Church and 
 Dr. Parkhurst's opened their doors to me and the 
 others fell slowly into line. 
 
 I had my say and felt better. I found a note from 
 Dr. Schauffler among my papers the other day that 
 was written on the morning after that first speech. 
 He was pleased with it and with the collection of 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 299 
 
 ^143.50 for the mission cause. I remember it made 
 me smile a little grimly. The fifty cents would have 
 come handy for lunch that day. It just happened 
 that I did not have any. It happened quite often. 
 I was, as I said, ever a bad manager. I mention it 
 here because of two letters that came while I have 
 been writing this, and which I may as well answer 
 now. One asks me to lift the mortscage from the 
 writer's home. I get a good many of that kind. 
 The writers seem to think I have much money and 
 might want to help them. I should like nothing 
 better. To go around, if one were rich, and pay 
 off mortgages on little homes, so that the owners 
 when they had got the interest together by pinch- 
 ing and scraping should find it all gone and paid 
 up without knowing how, seems to me must be the 
 very finest fun in all the world. But I shall never 
 be able to do it, for I haven't any other money than 
 what I earn with my pen and by lecturing, and 
 never had. So their appeals only make me poorer 
 by a two-cent stamp for an answer to tell them that, 
 and make them no richer. The other letter asks 
 why I and other young men who have had to battle 
 with the world did not go to the Young Men's 
 Christian Association, or to the missionaries, for 
 help. I do not know about the others, but I did 
 not want anybody to help me. There were plenty 
 that were worse off and needed help more. The 
 
300 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 only time I tried was when Pater Breton, the good 
 French priest in Buffalo, tried to get me across to 
 France to fight for his country, and happily did not 
 succeed. As to battling with the worlds that is good 
 for a young man, much better than to hang on to 
 somebody for support. A little starvation once in 
 a while even is not out of the way. We eat too 
 much anyhow, and when you have fought your way 
 through a tight place, you are the better for it. I 
 am afraid that is not always the case when you have 
 been shoved through. 
 
 And then again, as I have just told, when I did 
 go to the ministers with a fair proposition, they did 
 not-exactly jump at it. No, it was better the way 
 it was. 
 
 The thing I had sought vainly so long came in 
 the end by another road than I planned. One of 
 the editors of Scribners Magazine saw my pictures 
 and heard their story in his church, and came to 
 talk the matter over with me. As a result of that 
 talk I wrote an article that appeared in the Christ- 
 mas Scribners, 1889, under the title " How the 
 Other Half Lives," and made an instant impres- 
 sion. That was the beginning of better days. 
 
 Before I let the old depart I must set down an 
 incident of my reporter's experience that crowds in 
 with a good hearty laugh, though it was not the 
 slum that sent me to the Church of the Holy Com- 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 301 
 
 munion over on Sixth Avenue. And though the 
 door was shut in my face, it was not by the rector, 
 or with maUce prepense. A despatch from the 
 Tenderloin poHce station had it that the wife of 
 the Rev. Dr. Henry Mottet was locked up there, 
 out of her mind. We had no means of knowing 
 that Dr. Mottet was at that time a confirmed bach- 
 elor. So I went over to condole with him, and 
 incidentally to ask what was the matter with his 
 wife, any way. The servant who came to the door 
 did not know whether the doctor was in ; she would 
 go and see. But even as she said it the wind blew 
 the door shut behind her. It had a snap-lock. 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, " I am shut out. If the doctor 
 isn't in the house, I can't get in." 
 
 We rang, but no one came. There was only one 
 way : to try the windows. The poor girl could not 
 be left in the street. So we went around the rectory 
 and found one unlatched. She gave me a leg up, 
 and I raised the sash and crawled in. 
 
 Halfway in the room, with one leg over the sill, 
 I became dimly conscious of a shape there. Tall 
 and expectant, it stood between the door-curtains. 
 
 " Well, sir ! and who are you ? " it spoke sternly. 
 
 I climbed over the sill and put the question my- 
 self : " And who are you, sir.? " 
 
 " I am Dr. Mottet, and live in this house." He 
 had been in after all and had come down to hear 
 
302 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 what the ringing was about. " And now may I ask, 
 sir — ?" 
 
 " Certainly, you may. I am a reporter from Police 
 Headquarters, come up to tell you that your wife 
 is locked up in the Thirtieth Street police station." 
 
 The doctor looked fixedly at me for a full minute. 
 Then he slowly telescoped his tall frame into an 
 armchair, and sank down, a look of comic despair 
 settling upon his face. 
 
 " O Lord ! " he sighed heavily. " A strange man 
 climbs through my parlor window to tell me, a 
 bachelor, that my wife is locked up in the police 
 station. What will happen next } " 
 
 And then we laughed together and made friends. 
 The woman was just an ordinary lunatic. 
 
 I was late home from the office one evening the 
 week my Christmas article was printed. My wife 
 was waiting for me at the door, looking down the 
 street. I saw that she had something on her mind, 
 but the children were all right, she said ; nothing 
 was amiss. Supper over, she drew a- chair to the 
 fire and brought out a letter. 
 
 " I read it," she nodded. It was our way. The 
 commonest business letter is to me a human docu- 
 ment when she has read it. Besides, she knows so 
 much more than I. Her heart can find a way where 
 my head bucks blindly against stone walls. 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 303 
 
 The letter was from Jeanette Gilder, of the 
 Critic, asking if I had thought of making my 
 article into a book. If so, she knew a publisher. 
 My chance had come. I was at last to have my say. 
 
 I should have thought I would have shouted and 
 carried on. I didn't. We sat looking into the fire 
 together, she and I. Neither of us spoke. Then 
 we went up to the children. They slept sweetly in 
 their cribs. I saw a tear in her eye as she bent 
 over the baby's cradle, and caught her to me, 
 questioning. 
 
 " Shall we lose you now ? " she whispered, and 
 hid her head on my shoulder. I do not know what 
 jealous thought of authors being wedded to their 
 work had come into her mind ; or, rather, I do. I 
 felt it, and in my heart, while I held her close, I 
 registered a vow which I have kept. It was the 
 last tear she shed for me. Our daughter pouts at 
 her father now and then ; says I am " fierce." But 
 She comes with her sewing to sit where I write, and 
 when she comes the sun shines. 
 
 Necessarily, for a while, my new work held me 
 very close. " How the Other Half Lives " was 
 written at night while the house slept, for I had my 
 ofifice work to attend to in the day. Then it was 
 my habit to light the lamps in all the rooms of the 
 lower story and roam through them with my pipe, 
 for I do most of my writing on my feet. I began 
 
304 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the book with the new year. In November it was 
 published, and on the day it came out I joined the 
 staff of the Evening Sun. I merely moved up one 
 flight of stairs. Mulberry Street was not done with 
 me yet, nor I with it. 
 
 I had had a falling out with the manager of the 
 Associated Press Bureau, — the Tribune had retired 
 from the copartnership some years before, — and 
 during one brief summer ran an opposition shop 
 of my own. I sold police news to all the papers, 
 and they fell away from the Bureau with such 
 hearty unanimity that the manager came around 
 and offered to farm out the department to me 
 entirely if I would join forces. But independence 
 was ever sweet to me, and in this instance it proved 
 profitable even. I made at least three times as 
 much money as before, but I did it at such cost 
 of energy and effort that I soon found it could not 
 last, even with the phenomenal streak of good luck 
 I had struck. It seemed as if I had only to reach 
 out to turn up news. I hear people saying once 
 in a while that there is no such thing as luck. 
 They are wrong. There is ; I know it. It runs 
 in streaks, like accidents and fires. The thing is to 
 get in the way of it and keep there till it comes 
 along, then hitch on, and away you go. It is the 
 old story of the early bird. I got up at five o'clock, 
 three hours before any of my competitors, and some- 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 305 
 
 times they came down to the office to find my news 
 hawked about the street in extras of their own papers. 
 One way or another, a fight there was always on 
 hand. That seemed foreordained. If it was not 
 " the opposition " it was the poUce. When Mul- 
 berry Street took a rest the publisher's " reader " 
 began it, and the proof-reader. This last is an 
 enemy of human kind anyhow. Not only that he 
 makes you say things you never dreamed of, but 
 his being so cocksure that he knows better every 
 time, is a direct challenge to a fight. The "reader" 
 is tarred with the same stick. He is the one who 
 passes on the manuscript, and he has an ingrown 
 hatred of opinion. If a man has that, he is his 
 enemy before he ever sets eye on him. He passed 
 on my manuscript with a blue pencil that laid waste 
 whole pages, once a whole chapter, with a stroke. 
 It was like sacking a conquered city. But he did 
 not die in his sins. I joined battle at the first sight 
 of that blue pencil. The publishers said their reader 
 was a very capable man. So he was, and a fine fel- 
 low to boot ; had forgotten more than I ever knew, 
 except as to the other half, of which he did not 
 know anything. I suggested to the firm that if 
 they did not think so, they had better let him write 
 a book to suit, or else print mine as I wrote it. It 
 was fair, and they took my view of it. So did he. 
 The blue pencil went out of commission. 
 
3o6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 How deadly tired I was in those days I do not 
 think I myself knew until I went to Boston one 
 evening to help discuss sweating at the Institute 
 of Technology. I had an hour to spare, and 
 went around into Beacon Street to call upon a 
 friend. I walked mechanically up the stoop and 
 rang the bell. My friend was not in, said the ser- 
 vant who came to the door. Who should she say 
 called ? I stood and looked at her like a fool : I 
 had forgotten my name. I was not" asleep ; I was 
 rummaging in an agony of dread and excitement 
 through every corner and crevice of my brain for 
 my own name, but I did not find it. As slowly as 
 I could, to gain time, I reached for my card-case 
 and fumbled for a card, hoping to remember. But 
 no ray came. Until I actually read my name on 
 my card it was as utterly gone as if I had never 
 heard it. If the people of Boston got anything out 
 of my speech that day they did better than I. All 
 the time I spoke something kept saying over within 
 me : " You are a nice fellow to make a speech at the 
 Institute of Technology ; you don't even know your 
 own name." 
 
 After that I was haunted by a feeling that I would 
 lose myself altogether, and got into the habit of 
 leaving private directions in the office where I 
 would probably be found, should question arise. It 
 arose at last in a Brooklyn church where I was 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 307 
 
 making a speech with my magic-lantern pictures. 
 While I spoke a feeling kept growing upon me that 
 I ought to be down in the audience looking at the 
 pictures. It all seemed a long way off and in no 
 way related to me. Before I knew it, or any one had 
 time to notice, I had gone down and taken a front 
 seat. I sat there for as much as five minutes per- 
 haps, while the man with the lantern fidgeted and 
 the audience wondered, I suppose, what was coming 
 next. Then it was the pictures that did not change 
 which fretted me ; with a cold chill I knew I had 
 been lost, and went back and finished the speech. 
 No one was any the wiser, apparently. But I was 
 glad when, the following week, I wrote the last page 
 in my book. That night, my wife insists, I deliber- 
 ately turned a somerset on the parlor carpet while 
 the big children cheered and the baby looked on, 
 wide-eyed, from her high chair. 
 
 I preserve among my cherished treasures two let- 
 ters of that period from James Russell Lowell. In 
 one of them he gives me permission to use the 
 verses with which I prefaced the book. They were 
 the text from which I preached my sermon. He 
 writes that he is " glad they have so much life left in 
 them after forty years." But those verses will never 
 die. They tell in a few lines all I tried to tell on 
 three hundred pages. The other letter was written 
 when he had read the book. I reproduce it here. 
 
3o8 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ELMWOOD, 
 CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
 
 J'/<^ A^! /Cf^. 
 
 ^^.^L/' J/^ 
 
 •^ ^A^ /<^aj/ y.93._A ^nr^ /ifiJSt 
 A^ru/ /t^-eji ^ A-tt^ .iUru^/ ^J^ ^ ■ 
 
 Mr. Lowell's Letter. 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 309 
 
 For myself I have never been able to satisfactorily 
 explain the great run " How the Other Half Lives " 
 had. It is a curiously popular book even to-day. 
 Perhaps it was that I had had it in me so long that 
 it burst out at last with a rush that caught on. The 
 title had a deal to do with it. Mr. Howells asked 
 me once where I got it. I did not get it. It came 
 of itself. Like Topsy, it growed. It had run in 
 my mind ever since I thought of the things I tried 
 to describe. Then there was the piece of real good 
 luck that Booth's " In Darkest England " was pub- 
 lished just then. People naturally asked, "how 
 about New York .? " That winter Ward McAlHster 
 wrote his book about society as he had found it, and 
 the circuit was made. Ministers preached about the 
 contrast. " How the Other Half Lives " ran from 
 edition to edition. There was speedily a demand 
 for more " copy," a-nd I wrote " The Children of the 
 Poor," following the same track. Critics said there 
 were more " bones " in it, but it was never popular 
 like the "Other Half." 
 
 By " bones " I suppose they meant facts to tie to. 
 They were scarce enough at that stage of the in- 
 quiry. I have in my desk a table giving the ages 
 at which children get their teeth that bears witness 
 to that. I had been struggling with the problem of 
 child-labor in some East Side factories, and was not 
 making any headway. The children had certifi- 
 
3IO THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 cates, one and all, declaring them to be " fourteen," 
 and therefore fit to be employed. It was perfectly 
 evident that they were not ten in scores of cases, 
 but the employer shrugged his shoulders and 
 pointed to the certificate. The father, usually a 
 tailor, would not listen at all, but went right on 
 ironing. There was no birth registry to fall back 
 on ; that end of it was neglected. There seemed 
 to be no way of proving the fact, yet the fact was 
 there and must be proven. My own children were 
 teething at the time, and it gave me an idea. I got 
 Dr. Tracy to write out that table for me, showing 
 at what age the dog-teeth should appear, when the 
 molars, etc. Armed with that I went into the fac- 
 tories and pried open the little workers' mouths. 
 The girls objected : their teeth were quite generally 
 bad ; but I saw enough to enable me to speak posi- 
 tively. Even allowing for the backwardness of the 
 slum, it was clear that a child that had not yet 
 grown its dog-teeth was not "fourteen," for they 
 should have been cut at twelve at the latest. Three 
 years later the Reinhardt Committee reported to the 
 Legislature that the net result of the Factory Law 
 was a mass of perjury and child-labor, and day 
 began to dawn for the little ones, too. 
 
 Rough ways and rough work ? Yes, but you 
 must use the tools that come to hand, and be glad 
 for them, if you want to get things done. Bludg- 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 31 I 
 
 eons were needed just then, and, after all, you can 
 get a good deal of fun out of one when it is needed. 
 I know I did. By that time the whole battle with 
 the slum had evolved itself out of the effort to clean 
 one pig-sty, and, as for my own share in it, to settle 
 for one dead dog. It was raging all along the line 
 with demands for tenement-house reform and the 
 destruction of the old rookeries ; for parks for the 
 people who were penned up in the slum ; for play- 
 grounds for their children ; for decent teaching and 
 decent schools. There were too many dark spots 
 in New York where we had neither. So dense was 
 the ignorance of the ruling powers of the needs and 
 real condition of the public schools, which, on parade 
 days, they spoke of sententiously as the "corner-stone 
 of our liberties," while the people cheered the senti- 
 ment, that it was related how a Tammany Mayor 
 had appointed to the office of school trustee in the 
 Third Ward a man who had been dead a whole 
 year, and how, when the world marvelled, it had 
 been laughed off at the City Hall with the com- 
 ment that what did it matter : there were no schools 
 in the ward ; it was the wholesale grocery district. I 
 do not know how true it was, but there was no rea- 
 son why it might not be. It was exactly on a par 
 with the rest of it. I do not mean to say that there 
 were no good schools in New York. There were 
 some as good as anywhere; for there were high- 
 
312 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 souled teachers who redeemed even the slough we 
 were in from utter despair. But they were there in 
 spite of it and they were far from being the rule. 
 Let us hope for the day when that shall have been 
 reversed as a statement of fact. No one will hail 
 it more gladly than I. There is an easy way of 
 putting it to the test ; we did it once before. 
 Broach a measure of school reform and see what 
 the question is that will be asked by the teachers. 
 If it is, " How is it going to benefit the children ? " 
 hoist the flag; the day of deliverance is at hand. 
 In the battle I refer to that question was not asked 
 once. The teachers stood shoulder to shoulder for 
 their rights, let the children fare as they might. 
 
 However, that is an old grievance. , We had it 
 out over it once, and I have no mind to rip it up 
 again unless it is needed. My own father was a 
 teacher ; perhaps that is one reason why I revere 
 the calling so that I would keep its skirts clear of 
 politics at any hazard. Another is that I most 
 heartily subscribe to the statement that the public 
 school is the corner-stone of our liberties, and to 
 the sentiment that would keep the flag flying over 
 it always. Only I want as much respect for the 
 flag: a clean school under an unsoiled flag! So we 
 shall pull through; not otherwise. The thing 
 requires no argument. 
 
 My own effort in that fight was mainly for decent 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 
 
 313 
 
 schoolhouses, for playgrounds, and for a truant 
 school to keep the boys out of jail. If I was not 
 competent to argue over the curriculum with a 
 professor of pedagogy, I could tell, at least, if a 
 schoolroom was so jammed that to let me pass into 
 the next room the children in the front seat had 
 
 The Boys' "Playground" in an Old-time School. 
 
 to rise and stand; or if there was light enough for 
 them to see their slates or the blackboard. Nor 
 did it take the wisdom of a Solomon to decide that 
 a dark basement room, thirty by fifty feet, full of 
 rats, was not a proper place for a thousand children 
 to call their only " playground." Play, in the kin- 
 dergarten scheme, is the "normal occupation of 
 the child through which he first begins to perceive 
 
314 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 moral relations." Nice kind of morals burrowed 
 there for him ! There was, in the whole of Man- 
 hattan, but a single outdoor playground attached 
 to a public school, and that was an old burial-ground 
 in First Street that had been wrested from the dead 
 with immense toil. When I had fed fat my grudge 
 upon these things, I could still go where the public 
 school children came, and learn, by a little judicious 
 pumping, how my friend, the professor, had stored 
 their minds. That is, if they did not come to me. 
 Many hundreds of them did, when under Roosevelt 
 we needed two thousand new policemen, and it was 
 from some of them we learned that among the 
 thirteen States which formed the Union were " Eng- 
 land, Ireland, Wales, Belfast, and Cork " ; that Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was " murdered by Ballington Booth," 
 and that the Fire Department was in charge of 
 the city government when the Mayor was away. 
 Don't I wish it were, and that they would turn the 
 hose on a while! What a lot of trouble it would 
 save us in November. 
 
 As for a truant school, the lack of one was the 
 worst outrage of all, for it compelled the sending 
 of boys, who had done no worse harm than to play 
 hooky on a sunny spring day, to a jail with iron 
 bars in the windows. For the boy who did this 
 wicked thing — let me be plain about it and say 
 that if he had not; if he had patiently preferred 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 315 
 
 some of the schools I knew to a day of freedom out 
 in the sunshine, I should have thought him a mis- 
 erable little lunkhead quite beyond hope! As for 
 those who locked him up, almost nothing I can 
 think of would be bad enough for them. The 
 whole effort of society should be, and is getting to 
 be more and more, thank goodness and common 
 sense, to keep the boy out of jail. To run to it 
 with him the moment the sap begins to boil up in 
 him and he does any one of the thousand things we 
 have all done or wanted to do if we dared, why, it 
 is sinful folly. I am not saying that there are not 
 boys who ought to be in jail, though to my mind 
 it is the poorest use you can put them to ; but to 
 put truants there, to learn all the tricks the jail has 
 to teach, with them in the frame of mind in which 
 it receives them, — for boys are not fools, whatever 
 those who are set over them may be, and they 
 know when they are ill-used, — I know of nothing 
 so wickedly wasteful. That was our way ; is still 
 in fact, to a large extent, though the principle has 
 been disavowed as both foul and foolish. But in 
 those days the defenders of the system — Heaven 
 save the mark ! — fought for it yet, and it was give 
 and take right along, every day and all day. 
 
 Before this, in time to bear a strong hand in it 
 all, there had come into the field a new force that 
 was destined to give both energy and direction 
 
3l6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 to our scattered efforts for reform. Up till then 
 we had been a band of guerillas, the incentive 
 proceeding usually from Dr. Felix Adler, Mrs. 
 Josephine Shaw Lowell, or some one of their stamp ; 
 and the rest of us joining in to push that cart up 
 the hill, then taking time to breathe until another 
 came along that needed a lift. The social settle- 
 ments, starting as neighborhood guilds to reassert 
 the lost brotherhood, became almost from the first the 
 fulcrum, as it were, whence the lever for reform was 
 applied, because the whole idea of that reform 
 was to better the lot of those whom the prosperous 
 up-town knew vaguely only as " the poor." If parks 
 were wanted, if schools needed bettering, there were 
 at the College Settlement, the University Settle- 
 ment, the Nurses' Settlement, and at a score of 
 other such places, young enthusiasts to collect the 
 facts and to urge them, with the prestige of their 
 non-political organization to back them. The Hull 
 House out in Chicago set the pace, and it was 
 kept up bravely at this end of the line. For one, 
 I attached myself as a kind of volunteer "auxiliary" 
 to the College Settlement — that was what the girls 
 there called me — and to any one that would have 
 me, and so in a few years' time slid easily into 
 the day when my ruder methods were quite out of 
 date and ready to be shelved. 
 
 How it came about that, almost before I knew it, 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 
 
 317 
 
 my tongue was enlisted in the fight as well as my 
 pen I do not know myself. It could not be because 
 I had a " silver-tongue," for I read in the local news- 
 paper one day when F had been lecturing in the 
 western part of the state that "a voluble German 
 with a voice like a squeaky cellar-door " had been 
 in town. It seems that I had fallen into another 
 newspaper row, all unsuspecting, and was in the 
 opposition editor's camp. But, truly, I lay no claim 
 to eloquence. So it must have been the facts, again. 
 There is nothing like them. Whatever it was, it 
 made me smile sometimes in the middle of a speech 
 to think of the prophecies when I was a schoolboy 
 that "my tongue would be my undoing," for here it 
 was helping right wrongs instead. In fact, that was 
 what it had tried to do in the old days when the teach- 
 ers were tyrannical. It entered the lists here when 
 Will Craig, a clerk in the Health Department, with 
 whom I had struck up a friendship, helped me turn 
 my photographs into magic-lantern slides by paying 
 the bills, and grew from that, until now my winters 
 are spent on the lecture platform altogether. I 
 always liked the work. It tires less than the office 
 routine, and you feel the touch with your fellows 
 more than when you sit and write your message. 
 Also, if you wish to learn about a thing, the best 
 way is always to go and try to teach some one else 
 that thing. I never make a speech on a subject I 
 
3l8 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 am familiar with but that I come away knowing 
 more about it than I did at the start, though no one 
 else may have said a word. 
 
 Then there is the chairman. You never can tell 
 what sort of surprise is in store for you. In a 
 Massachusetts town last winter I was hailed on the 
 stage by one of his* tribe, a gaunt, funereal sort of 
 man, who wanted to know what he should say 
 about me. 
 
 "Oh," said I, in a spirit of levity, "say anything 
 you like. Say I am the most distinguished citizen 
 in the country. They generally do." 
 
 Whereupon my funereal friend marched upon the 
 stage and calmly announced to the audience that he 
 did not know this man Riis, whom he was charged 
 with introducing, never heard of him. 
 
 " He tells me," he went on with never a wink, 
 "that he is the most distinguished citizen in the 
 country. You can judge for yourselves when you 
 have heard him." 
 
 I thought at first it was some bad kind of joke ; 
 but no ! He was not that kind of man. I do not 
 suppose he had smiled since he was born. Maybe 
 he was an undertaker. Assuredly, he ought to be. 
 But he had bowels after all. Instead of goina: off 
 the stage and leaving me blue with rage, he stayed 
 to exhort the audience in a fifteen minutes' speech 
 to vote right, or something of that sort. The single 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 319 
 
 remark, when at last he turned his back, that it was 
 a reUef to have him " extinguished," made us men 
 and brothers, that audience and me. I think of him 
 with almost as much pleasure as I do of that city 
 editor chap out in Illinois who came blowing upon 
 the platform at the last minute and handed me a 
 typewritten speech with the question if that would 
 do. I read it over. It began with the statement 
 that it was the general impression that all newspaper- 
 men were liars, and went on by easy stages to point 
 out that there were exceptions, myself for instance. 
 The rest was a lot of praise to which I had no 
 claim. I said so, and that I wished he would leave 
 it out. 
 
 " Oh, well," he said, with a happy smile, " don't you 
 see it gives you your cue. Then you can turn 
 around and say that anyway I am a liar." 
 
 With tongue or pen, the argument shaped itself 
 finally into the fundamental one for the rescue of 
 the home imperilled by the slum. There all roads 
 met. Good citizenship hung upon that issue. Say 
 what you will, a man cannot live like a pig and vote 
 like a man. The dullest of us saw it. The tene- 
 ment had given to New York the name of " the 
 homeless city." But with that gone which made 
 life worth living, what were liberty worth.? With 
 no home to cherish, how long before love of country 
 would be an empty sound.? Life, liberty, pursuit of 
 
320 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 happiness ? Wind ! says the slum, and the slum is 
 right if we let it be. We cannot get rid of the 
 tenements that shelter two million souls in New 
 York to-day, but we set about making them at least 
 as nearly fit to harbor human souls as might be. 
 That will take a long time yet. But a beginning 
 was made. With reform looming upon the heels of 
 the Lexow disclosures came the Gilder Tenemept- 
 House Commission in the autumn of 1894. 
 
 Typical East Side Tenement Block. 
 Five hundred babies in it, not one bathtub. 
 
 Greater work was never done for New York than 
 by that faithful body of men. The measure of it is 
 not to be found in what was actually accomplished, 
 though the volume of that was great, but in what it 
 made possible. Upon the foundations they laid 
 down we may build for all time and be the better 
 for it. Light and air acquired a legal claim, and 
 where the sun shines into the slum, the slum is 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 321 
 
 doomed. The worst tenements were destroyed ; 
 parks were opened, schools built, playgrounds 
 made. The children's rights were won back for 
 them. The slum denied them even the chance to 
 live, for it was shown that the worst rear tenements 
 murdered the babies at the rate of one in five. ■ The 
 Commission made it clear that the legislation that 
 was needed was "the kind that would root out every 
 old ramshackle disease-breeding tenement in the 
 city." That was the way to begin it. As to the rest 
 of them, it laid the foundation deeper yet, for it 
 made us see that life in them " conduces to the 
 corruption of the young." That told it all. It 
 meant that a mortgage was put on the civic life of 
 the morrow; which was not to be borne. We were 
 forewarned. 
 
 The corruption of the young ! We move with 
 rapid strides in our time. That which was a threat, 
 scoffed at by many, has become a present and dread- 
 ful peril in half a dozen brief years. We took a 
 short cut to make it that when we tried to drain the 
 pool of police blackmail of which the Lexow dis- 
 closures had shown us the hideous depths. We 
 drained it into the tenements, and for the police 
 infamy got a real-estate blackmail that is worse. 
 The chairman of the Committee of Fifteen tells us 
 that of more than a hundred tenements, full of 
 growinsf children, which his committee has can- 
 
322 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 vassed, not one had escaped the contamination that 
 piles up the landlord's profits. Twelve dollars for 
 an honest flat, thirty for the other kind and no 
 questions asked ! I find in my scrap-book this 
 warning, sounded by me in the Christmas holidays, 
 1893, when the country was ringing with Dr. Park- 
 hurst's name : — 
 
 " I would not, whatever else might happen, by 
 any hasty or ill-advised system of wholesale raids 
 crowd these women into the tenements and flats 
 of our city. That is what will surely happen, is 
 happening now. It is a danger infinitely greater 
 than any flowing from their presence where they 
 are, and as they ai-e. Each centre of moral conta- 
 gion by this scattering process becomes ten or 
 twenty, planted where they will do the most pos- 
 sible harm. Think of the children brought in daily, 
 hourly contact with this vice ! Think of the thou- 
 sands of young women looking vainly for work this 
 hard winter! Be there ever so little money for 
 woman's honest work, there is always enough to 
 buy her virtue. Have tenement houses moral re- 
 sources that can be trusted to keep her safe from 
 this temptation ? 
 
 " This is a wicked villany that must not be per- 
 mitted, come whatever else may. We hear of dan- 
 ger to 'our young men,' from present conditions. 
 What sort of young men must they be who would 
 
I BECOME AN AUTHOR 323 
 
 risk the sacrifice of their poorer sisters for their 
 own ' safety ' ? And it is being risked wherever 
 houses of this kind are being shut up and the 
 women turned into the streets, there to shift for 
 themselves. The jail does not keep them. Chris- 
 tian families will not receive them. They cannot 
 be killed. No door opens to them : yet they have 
 to go somewhere. And they go where they think 
 they can hide from the police and still ply the trade 
 that gives them the only living society is willing 
 they shall have, though it says it is not." 
 
 And they did go there. Dr. Parkhurst was not 
 to blame. He was fighting Tammany that dealt 
 the cards and took all the tricks, and for that fight 
 New York owes him a debt it hardly yet knows of. 
 Besides, though those raids hastened the process, 
 it was already well underway. The police extor- 
 tion of itself would have finished it in time. A 
 blackmailer in the long run always kills the goose 
 that lays his golden egg. His greed gets the better 
 of his sense. The interview I quoted was not a 
 plea for legalizing wrong. That will get us no 
 farther. It was rather a summons to our people to 
 cease skulking behind lying phrases and look the 
 matter squarely in the face. With a tenement- 
 house law, passed this winter, which sends the 
 woman to jail and fines the landlord and his house 
 $1000, we shall be in the way shortly of doing so. 
 
324 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Until we do that justice first, I do not see how we 
 can. Poverty's back is burdened enough without 
 our loading upon it the sins we are afraid to face. 
 Meanwhile we shall be getting up courage to talk 
 plainly about it, which is half the battle. Think of 
 the shock it would have given our grandmothers to 
 hear of a meeting of women in a public hall " to 
 protest against protected vice." On a Sunday, too. 
 Come to think of it, I do not know but that whole- 
 some, plain speech on this subject is nearer the 
 whole than half the battle. I rather guess it is. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ROOSEVELT COMES MULBERRY STREET's GOLDEN 
 
 AGE 
 
 See now how things fall out. Hardly had I sent 
 the chapter to the printer in which I posted proof- 
 readers as enemies of mankind when here comes the 
 proof of the previous one with a cordial note of 
 thanks from this particular enemy " for the inspira- 
 tion " he found in it. So then I was mistaken, as 
 I have been often before, and owe him the confes- 
 sion. Good land ! what are we that we should 
 think ourselves always right, or, lest we do wrong, 
 sit idle all our lives waiting for light ? The light 
 comes as we work toward it. Roosevelt was right 
 when he said that the only one who never makes 
 mistakes is the one who never does anything. Pre- 
 serve us from him ; from the man who eternally 
 wants to hold the scales even and so never gets 
 done weighing — never hands anything over the 
 counter. Take him away and put red blood into 
 his veins. And let the rest of us go ahead and 
 make our mistakes — as few as we can, as many as 
 we must; only let us go ahead. 
 
 325 
 
326 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 All of which has reference to other things I have 
 in mind, not to the proof-reader, against whom I 
 have no grudge to-da3^ As for him, perhaps, he 
 is just a sign that the world moves. 
 
 Move it did at last in the year (1894) that gave 
 us the Lexow Investigating Committee, the Citizens' 
 Seventy, and reform. Tammany went out, speeded 
 on, its way by~ Dr. Parkhurst, and an administra- 
 tion came in that was pledged to all we had been 
 longing and laboring for. For three years we had 
 free hands and we used them. Mayor Strong's 
 administration was not the millennium, but it 
 brought New York much nearer to it than it had 
 ever been, and it set up some standards toward 
 Vv'hich we may keep on striving with profit to our- 
 selves. The Mayor himself was not a saint. He 
 was an honest gentleman of sturdy purpose to do 
 the right, and, normally, of singular practical wis- 
 dom in choosing the men to help him do it, but 
 with an intermittent delusion that he was a shrewd 
 politician. When it came uppermost he made bar- 
 gains and appointed men to oiifice who did their 
 worst to undo what good the Warings, the Roose- 
 velts, and their kind had wrought. In the struggle 
 that ensued Mayor Strong was always on the side 
 of right, but when he wanted most to help he could 
 not. It is the way of the world. Nevertheless, as 
 I said, it moved. 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 327 
 
 How far we came is history, plain to read in our 
 streets that will never again be as dirty as they 
 were, though they may not be as clean as Waring 
 left them ; in the threescore splendid new school- 
 houses that stand as monuments of those busy 
 years; in the open spots that let the sunlight into 
 the slum where it was darkest and most foul ; in 
 the death rate that came down from 26.32 per thou- 
 sand of the living in 1887 to 19.53 i^i 1897. That 
 was the " Ten Years' War " I wrote about and have 
 here before referred to. The three years of the 
 Strong administration saw all the big battles in 
 which we beat the slum. I am not going to re- 
 hearse them, for I am trying to tell my own story, 
 and now I am soon done with it. I carried a gun 
 as a volunteer in that war, and that was all ; not 
 even in the ranks at that. I was ever an irregular, 
 given to sniping on my own hook. Roosgvelt, in- 
 deed, wanted me to have a seat among Mayor 
 Strong's official advisers ; but we had it out over 
 that when he told me of it, and the compact we 
 made that he should never ask that service of me 
 he has kept. So he spared the Mayor much em- 
 barrassment ; for, as I said, I am not good in the 
 ranks, more is the pity : and me he saved for such 
 use as I could be of, which was well. For shortly 
 it all centred in Mulberry Street, where he was. 
 
 We were not strangers. It could not have been 
 
328 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 long after I wrote " How the Other Half Lives " 
 that he came to the Evening Sun ofitice one day 
 looking for me. I was out, and he left his card, 
 merely writing on the back of it that he had read 
 my book and had " come to help." That was all, 
 and it tells the whole story of the man. I loved 
 him from the day I first saw him ; nor ever in all 
 the years that have passed has he failed of the 
 promise made then. No one ever helped as he did. 
 For two years we were brothers in Mulberry Street. 
 When he left I had seen its golden age. I knew 
 too well the evil day that was coming back to have 
 any heart in it after that. 
 
 Not that we were carried heavenward " on flow- 
 ery beds of ease " while it lasted. There is very 
 little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads, as we 
 all of us found out. The lawbreaker found it out 
 who predicted scornfully that he would " knuckle 
 down to politics the way they all did," and lived to 
 respect him, though he swore at him, as the one of 
 them all who was stronger than pull. The peace- 
 loving citizen who hastened to Police Headquarters 
 with anxious entreaties to " use discretion " in the 
 enforcement of unpopular laws found it out and 
 went away with a new and breathless notion well- 
 ing up in him of an official's sworn duty. That 
 was it; that was what made the age golden, that 
 for the first time a moral purpose came into the 
 
President Theodore Roosevelt, of the Police Board. 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 329 
 
 street. In the light of it everything was trans- 
 formed. 
 
 Not all at once. It took us weary months to 
 understand that the shouting about the "enforce- 
 ment of the dead Excise Law " was lying treachery 
 or rank ignorance, one as bad as the other. The 
 Excise Law was not dead. It was never so much 
 alive as under Tammany, but it was enforced only 
 against those saloon-keepers who needed discipline. 
 It was a Tammany club, used to drive them into 
 camp with ; and it was used so vigorously that no 
 less than eight thousand arrests were made under 
 it in the year before Roosevelt made them all close 
 up. Pretty lively corpse, that ! But we understood 
 at last, most of us ; understood that the tap-root of 
 the police blackmail was there, and that it had to be 
 pulled up if we were ever to get farther. We under- 
 stood that. we were the victims of our own sham- 
 ming, and we grew to be better citizens for it. The 
 police force became an army of heroes — for a sea- 
 son. All the good in it came out ; and there is a 
 lot of it in the worst of times. Roosevelt had ths 
 true philosopher's stone that turns dross to gold, in 
 his own sturdy faith in his fellow-man. Men be- 
 came good because he thought them so. 
 
 By which I am not to be understood as meaning 
 that he just voted them good — the police, for 
 instance — and sat by waiting to see the wings 
 
330 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 grow. No, but he helped them sprout. It is long 
 since I have enjoyed anything so much as I did 
 those patrol trips of ours on the " last tour " between 
 midnight and sunrise, which earned for him the 
 name of Haroun al Roosevelt. I had at last found 
 one who was willing to get up when other people 
 slept — including, too often, the police — and see 
 what the town looked like then. He was more 
 than willing. I laid out the route, covering ten or a 
 dozen patrol-posts, and we met at 2 a.m. on the steps 
 of the Union League Club, objects of suspicion on 
 the part of two or three attendants and a watchman 
 who shadowed us as night-prowlers till we were out 
 of their bailiwick. I shall never forget that first 
 morning when we travelled for three hours along 
 First and Second and Third avenues, from Forty- 
 second Street to Bellevue, and found of ten patrol- 
 men just one doing his work faithfully. Two or 
 three were chatting on saloon corners and guyed 
 the President of the Board when he asked them if 
 that was what they were there for. One was sitting 
 asleep on a butter-tub in the middle of the sidewalk, 
 snoring so that you could hear him across the street, 
 and was inclined to be " sassy " when aroused and 
 told to go about his duty. Mr. Roosevelt was a 
 most energetic roundsman and a fair one to boot. 
 It was that quality which speedily won him the 
 affection of the force. He hunted high and low 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 
 
 331 
 
 before he gave up his man, giving him every 
 chance. We had been over one man's beat three 
 times, searching every nook and cranny of it, and 
 were reluctantly compelled to own that he was 
 not there, when the 
 "boss" of an all-night 
 restaurant on Third 
 Avenue came out 
 with a club as we 
 passed and gave the 
 regulation signal 
 raps on the sidewalk. 
 There was some trou- 
 ble in his place. 
 Three times he re- 
 peated the signal 
 calling for the patrol- 
 man on the beat be- 
 fore he turned to 
 Roosevelt, who stood 
 by, with the angry 
 exclamation : — 
 
 "Where in thunder does that. copper sleep.'' He 
 orter'd tole me when he giv' up the barber-shop, so's 
 a fellow could find him." 
 
 We didn't find him then, but he found the Presi- 
 dent of the Board later on when summoned to 
 Police Headquarters to explain why he had changed 
 
 ' One was sitting asleep on a butter- 
 tub." 
 
332 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 his sleeping quarters. The whole force woke up as 
 a result of that night's work, and it kept awake those 
 two years, for, as it learned by experience, Mr. 
 Roosevelt's spectacles might come gleaming around 
 the corner at any hour. He had not been gone a 
 year before the Chief found it necessary to transfer 
 half the force in an up-town precinct to keep it 
 awake. The firemen complained that fires at night 
 gained too much headway while the police slept 
 There was no Roosevelt to wake them up. 
 
 Looking after his patrolmen was not the only: 
 errand that took him abroad at night. As Police 
 President, Mr. Roosevelt was a member of the 
 Health Board, and sometimes it was the tenements 
 we went inspecting when the tenants slept. He 
 was after facts, and learned speedily to get them as 
 he could. When, as Governor, he wanted to know 
 just how the Factory Law was being executed, he 
 came down from Albany and spent a whole day 
 with me personally investigating tenements in which 
 sweating was carried on. I had not found a Gov- 
 ernor before, or a Police President either, who would 
 do it ; but so he learned exactly what he wanted to 
 know, and what he ought to do, and did it. 
 
 I never saw Theodore Roosevelt to better advan- 
 tage than when he confronted the labor men at 
 their meeting-place. Clarendon Hall. The police 
 were all the time having trouble with strikers and 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 333 
 
 their " pickets." Roosevelt saw that it was because 
 neither party understood fully the position of the 
 other and, with his usual directness, sent word to 
 the labor organizations that he would like to talk it 
 over with them. At his request I went with him to 
 the meeting. It developed almost immediately that 
 the labor men had taken a wrong measure of the 
 man. They met him as a politician playing for 
 points, and hinted at trouble unless their demands 
 were met. Mr. Roosevelt broke them off short : — 
 
 " Gentlemen ! " he said, with that snap of the jaws 
 that always made people listen, " I asked to meet 
 you, hoping that we might come to understand one 
 another. Remember, please, before we go farther, 
 that the worst injury any one of you can do to the 
 cause of labor is to counsel violence. It will also be 
 worse for himself. Understand distinctly that order 
 will be kept. The poUce will keep it. Now we 
 can proceed." 
 
 I was never so proud and pleased as when they 
 applauded him to the echo. He reddened with 
 pleasure, for he saw that the best in them had come 
 out on top, as he expected it would. 
 
 It was of this incident that a handle was first 
 made by Mr. Roosevelt's enemies in and out of the 
 Police Board — and he had many — to attack him. 
 It happened that there was a music hall in the 
 building in which the labor men met. The yellow 
 
334 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 newspapers circulated the lie that he went there on 
 purpose to see the show, and the ridiculous story 
 was repeated until the liars nearly persuaded them- 
 selves that it was so. They would not have been 
 able to understand the kind of man they had to do 
 with, had they tried. Accordingly they fell into 
 their own trap. It is a tradition of Mulberry Street 
 that the notorious Seeley dinner raid was planned 
 by his enemies in the department of which he was 
 the head, in the belief that they would catch Mr. 
 Roosevelt there. The diners were supposed to be 
 his " set." 
 
 Some time after that I was in his ofifice one day 
 when a police official of superior rank came in and 
 requested private audience with him. They stepped 
 aside and the policeman spoke in an undertone, 
 urging something strongly. Mr. Roosevelt listened. 
 Suddenly I saw him straighten up as a man recoils 
 from something unclean and dismiss the other with 
 a sharp: "No, sir! I don't fight that way." The 
 policeman went out crestfallen. Roosevelt took 
 two or three turns about the floor, struggling evi- 
 dently with strong disgust. He told me afterward 
 that the man had come to him with what he said 
 was certain knowledge that his enemy could that 
 night be found in a known evil house up-town, which 
 it was his alleged habit to visit. His proposition 
 was to raid it then and so "get square." To the 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 335 
 
 policeman it must have seemed like throwing a 
 good chance away. But it was not Roosevelt's 
 way ; he struck no blow below the belt. In the 
 Governor's chair afterward he gave the politicians 
 whom he fought, and who fought him, the same 
 terms. They tried their best to upset him, for they 
 had nothing to expect from him. But they knew 
 and owned that he fought fair. Their backs were 
 secure. He never tricked them to gain an advan- 
 tage. A promise given by him was always kept to 
 the letter. 
 
 Failing to trap him only added to the malignity 
 of his enemies. Roosevelt was warned that he was 
 " shadowed " night and day, but he laughed their 
 scheming to scorn. It is an article of faith with 
 him that an honest man has nothing to fear from 
 plotters, and he walked unharmed among their 
 snares. The w^hole country remembers the year- 
 long fight in the Police Board and Mayor Strong's 
 vain attempt to remove the obstructionist who, 
 under an ill-conceived law, was able to hold up the 
 scheme of reform. Most of the time I was com- 
 pelled to stand idly by, unable to help. Once I 
 eased my feelings by telling Commissioner Parker 
 in his own office what I thought of him. I went in 
 and shut the door, and then told it all to him. Nor 
 did I mince matters ; I might not get so good a 
 chance again. Mr. Parker sat quite still, poking 
 
336 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the fire. When I ceased at last, angry and exas- 
 perated, he looked up and said calmly : — 
 
 " Well, Mr. Riis, what you tell me has at least the 
 merit of frankness." 
 
 You see how it was. I should never have been 
 able to help in the Board. Out of it, my chance 
 came at last when it was deemed necessary to give 
 the adversary " a character." Mr. Roosevelt had 
 been speaking to the Methodist ministers, and as 
 usual had carried all before him. The community 
 was getting up a temper that would shortly put an 
 end to the deadlock in the Police Board and set the 
 wheels of reform moving again. Then one day we 
 heard that Commissioner Parker had been invited 
 by the Christian Endeavorers of an up-town church 
 to address them on " Christian Citizenship." That 
 was not consecrated common sense. I went to the 
 convention of Endeavorers the next week and told 
 them so. I asked them to send a despatch to Gov- 
 ernor Black then and there endorsing Roosevelt and 
 Mayor Strong, and urging him to end the deadlock 
 that made public scandal by removing Commissioner 
 Parker; and they did. I regret to say that I felt 
 compelled to take a like course with the Methodist 
 ministers, for so I grieved a most good-natured 
 gentleman, Colonel Grant, who was Mr. Parker's 
 ally in the Board. Grant was what was described 
 as " a great Methodist." But I feel sure that 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 337 
 
 Brother Simmons would have approved of me. I 
 was following the course he laid down. The one 
 loyal friend Mr. Roosevelt had in the Board was 
 Avery D. Andrews, a strong, sensible, and clean 
 young man, who stood by his chief to the last, and 
 left with him a good mark on the force. 
 
 The yellow newspapers fomented most industri- 
 ously the trouble in the Board, never failing to take 
 the wrong side of any question. One of them set 
 about doling out free soup that winter, when work 
 was slack, as a means, of course, of advertising its 
 own " charity." Of all forms of indiscriminate 
 almsgiving, that is the most offensive and most 
 worthless, and they knew it, or they would not 
 have sent me a wheedling invitation to come and 
 inspect their " relief work," offering to have a car- 
 riage take me around. I sent word back that I 
 should certainly look into the soup, but that I 
 should go on foot to it. Roosevelt and I made the 
 inspection together. We questioned the tramps 
 in line, and learned from their own lips that they 
 had come from out of town to take it easy in a 
 city where a man did not have to work to live. 
 We followed the pails that were carried away from 
 the "relief station" by children, their contents some- 
 times to figure afterwards as " free lunch " in the 
 saloon where they had been exchanged for beer; 
 and, knowing the facts, we denounced the thing as 
 
338 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 a nuisance. The paper printed testimonials from 
 Commissioners Parker and Grant, who certified 
 from Mulberry Street, which they had not left, 
 that the soup was a noble Christian charity, and so 
 thought it evened things up, I suppose. I noticed, 
 however, that the soup ran out soon after, and I 
 hope we have seen the last of it. We can afford 
 to leave that to Philadelphia, where common sense 
 appears to be drowned in it. 
 
 I had it out with them at last all together. 
 When I have told of it let the whole wretched 
 thing depart and be gone for good. It was after 
 Roosevelt had gone away. That he was not there 
 was no bar to almost daily attacks on him, under 
 which I chafed, sitting at the meetings as a re- 
 porter. I knew right well they were intended to 
 provoke me to an explosion that might have given 
 grounds for annoying me, and I kept my temper 
 until one day, when, the subject of dives being 
 mentioned. Commissioner Parker drawled, with the 
 reporter from the soup journal whispering in his 
 ear : — 
 
 " Was not — er-r — that the place where — er-r — 
 Mr. Roosevelt went to see a show with his friend ? " 
 
 He was careful not to ■ look in my direction, but 
 the reporter did, and I leaped at the challenge. I 
 waited until the Board had formally adjourned, then 
 halted it as Mr. Parker was trying to escape. I do 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 339 
 
 not now remember what I said. It would not make 
 calm reading, I suspect. It was the truth, anyhow, 
 and came pretty near being the whole truth. Mr. 
 Parker fled, putting his head back through the half- 
 closed door to explain that he " only knew what 
 that reporter told " him. In the security of his 
 room it must have occurred to him., however, that 
 he had another string to his bow; for at the next 
 session Commissioner Grant moved my expulsion 
 because I had " disturbed the Board meeting." But 
 President Moss reminded him curtly that I had 
 done nothing of the kind, and that ended it. 
 
 One of the early and sensational results of reform 
 in Mulberry Street was the retirement of Superin- 
 tendent Byrnes. There was not one of us all who 
 had known him long who did not regret it, though 
 I, for one, had to own the necessity of it ; for Byrnes 
 stood for the old days that were bad. But, chained 
 as he was in the meanness and smallness of it all, 
 he was yet cast in a different mould. Compared 
 with his successor, he was a giant every way. 
 Byrnes was a " big policeman." We shall not soon 
 have another like him, and that may be both good 
 and bad. He was unscrupulous, he was for Byrnes 
 — he was a policeman, in short, with all the failings 
 of the trade. But he made the detective service 
 great. He chased the thieves to Europe, or gave 
 them license to live in New York on condition that 
 
340 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 they did not rob there. He was a Czar, with all an 
 autocrat's irresponsible powers, and he exercised 
 them as he saw fit. If they were not his, he took 
 them anyhow; police service looks to results first. 
 There was that in Byrnes which made me stand up 
 for him in spite of it all. Twice I held Dr. Park- 
 hurst from his throat, but 
 in the end I had to admit 
 that the Doctor was right. 
 I believed that, untram- 
 melled, Byrnes might have 
 been a mighty engine for 
 good, and it was with sor- 
 row I saw him go. He 
 left no one behind him fit 
 to wear his shoes. 
 
 Byrnes was a born po- 
 liceman. Those who hated 
 him said he was also a 
 
 Chief of Police Thomas Byrnes. ^^^.^ ^yj.^^^_ ^^ jj^ ^jjg 
 
 a high horse when the fit was on him and he thought 
 it served his purpose. So we came into collision 
 in the early days when he was captain in Mercer 
 Street. They had a prisoner over there with a 
 story which I had cause to believe my rivals had 
 obtained. I went to Byrnes and was thundered 
 out of the station-house. There he was boss and 
 it suited him to let me see it. We had not met 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 341 
 
 before. But we met again that night. I went to 
 the Superintendent of PoHce, who was a Repub- 
 hcan, and, applying all the pressure of the Trib- 
 une, which I served, got from him an order on 
 Captain Byrnes to let me interview his prisoner. 
 Old Mr. Walling tore his hair; said the thing had 
 never been done before, and it had not. But I got 
 the order and got the interview, though Byrnes, 
 black with rage, commanded a policeman to stand 
 on either side of the prisoner while I talked to him. 
 He himself stood by, glaring at me. It was not a 
 good way to get an interview, and, in fact, the man 
 had nothing to tell. But I had my way and I made 
 the most of it. After that Captain Byrnes and I 
 got along. We got to think a lot of each other 
 after a while. 
 
 Perhaps he was a tyrant because he was set over 
 crooks, and crooks are cowards in the presence of 
 authority. His famous "third degree" was chiefl}' 
 what he no doubt considered a little wholesome 
 "slugging." He would beat a thief into telling 
 him what he wanted to know. Thieves have no 
 rights a policeman thinks himself bound to respect. 
 But when he had to do with men with minds he 
 had other resources. He tortured his prisoner into 
 confession in the linger murder case by locking 
 him up out of reach of a human voice, or sight of 
 a human face, in the basement of Police Headquar- 
 
342 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ters, and keeping him there four days, fed by invisi- 
 ble hands. On the fifth he had him brought up 
 through a tortuous way, where the tools he had 
 used in murdering his partner were displayed on 
 the walls as if by accident. Led into the Inspec- 
 tor's presence by the jailer, he was made to stand 
 while Byrnes finished a letter. Then he turned his 
 piercing glance upon him with a gesture to sit. 
 The murderer sank trembling upon a lounge, the 
 only piece of furniture in the room, and sprang to 
 his feet with a shriek the next instant : it was the 
 one upon which he had slaughtered his friend, all 
 blood-bespattered as then. He sprawled upon the 
 floor, a gibbering, horror-stricken wretch, and con- 
 fessed his sin. 
 
 As in this instance, so in the McGloin murder 
 case, the moral certainty of guilt was absolute, but 
 the legal evidence was lacking. McGloin was a 
 young ruffian who had murdered a saloon-keeper 
 at a midnight raid on his place. He was the fellow 
 who the night before he was hanged invited the 
 Chief of Detectives to " come over to the wake ; 
 they'll have a devil of a time." For six months 
 Byrnes had tried everything to bring the crime 
 home to him, but in vain. At last he sent out and 
 had McGloin and his two " pals " arrested, but so 
 that none of them knew of the plight of the others. 
 McGloin was taken to Mulberry Street, and orders 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 343 
 
 were given to bring the others in at a certain 
 hour fifteen or twenty minutes apart. Byrnes put 
 McGloin at the window in his office while he 
 questioned him. Nothing could be got out of him. 
 As he sat there a door was banged below. Look- 
 ing out he saw one of his friends led across the 
 yard in charge of policemen. Byrnes, watching 
 him narrowly, saw his cheek blanch; but still his 
 nerve held. Fifteen minutes passed ; another door 
 banged. The murderer, looking out, saw his other 
 pal led in a prisoner. He looked at Byrnes. The 
 Chief nodded : — 
 
 " Squealed, both." 
 
 It was a lie, and it cost the man his life. " The 
 jig is up then," he said, and told the story that 
 brought him to the gallows. 
 
 I could not let Byrnes go without a word, for 
 he filled a large space in my life. It is the reporter, 
 I suppose, who sticks out there. The boys called 
 him a great faker, but they were hardly just to him 
 in that. I should rather call him a great actor, and 
 without being that no man can be a great detec- 
 tive. He made life in a mean street picturesque 
 while he was there, and for that something is due 
 him. He was the very opposite of Roosevelt — 
 quite without moral purpose or the comprehension 
 of it, yet with a streak of kindness in him that 
 sometimes put preaching to shame. Mulberry 
 
344 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Street swears by him to-day, even as it does, under 
 its breath, by Roosevelt. Decide from that for 
 yourself whether his presence there was for the 
 good or the bad. 
 
 In writing " How the Other Half Lives " I had 
 been at great pains not to overstate my case. I 
 knew that it would be questioned, and was anxious 
 that no flaws should be picked in it, for, if there 
 were, harm might easily come of it instead of good. 
 I saw now that in that I had been wise. The 
 Gilder Tenement-House Commission more than 
 confirmed all that I had said about the tenements 
 and the schools. The Reinhardt Committee was 
 even more emphatic on the topic of child labor. I 
 was asked to serve on the Seventy's sub-committee 
 on Small Parks. In the spring of 1896, the Coun- 
 cil of Confederated Good Government Clubs ap- 
 pointed me its general agent, and I held the 
 position for a year, giving all my spare time to the 
 planning and carrying out of such work as it seemed 
 to me ought to make a record for a reform adminis- 
 tration. We wanted it to last. That was a great 
 year. They wanted a positive programme, and my 
 notions of good government were nothing if not 
 positive. They began and ended with the people's 
 life. We tore down unfit tenements, forced the 
 opening of parks and playgrounds, the establish- 
 ment of a truant school and the remodelling of the 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 345 
 
 whole school system, the demolition of the over- 
 crowded old Tombs and the erection on its site 
 of a decent new prison. We overhauled the civil 
 courts and made them over new in the charter of 
 the Greater New York. We lighted dark halls ; 
 closed the " cruller " bakeries in tenement-house 
 cellars that had caused the loss of no end of lives, 
 for the crullers were boiled in fat in the early 
 morning hours while the tenants slept, and when 
 the fat was spilled in the fire their peril was awful. 
 We fought the cable-car managers at home and 
 the opponents of a truant school at Albany. We 
 backed up Roosevelt in his fight in the Police 
 Board, and — well, I shall never get time to tell it all. 
 But it was a great year. That it did not keep the 
 Good Government clubs alive was no fault of my 
 programme. It was mine, I guess. I failed to 
 inspire them with the faith that was in me. I had 
 been going it alone so long that I did not know 
 how to use the new tool that had come to hand. 
 There is nothing like an organization if you know 
 how to use it. I did not. Perhaps, also, politics 
 had something to do with it. They were in for 
 playing the game. I never understood it. 
 
 But if I did not make the most of it, I had a 
 good time that year. There were first the two 
 small parks to be laid out over on the East Side, 
 where the Gilder Commission had pointed to the 
 
346 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 smothering crowds. I had myself made a member 
 of the Citizens' Committee that was appointed to 
 locate them. It did not take us any nine years or 
 six, or three. We did the business in three weeks, 
 and having chosen the right spots, we went to the 
 Legislature with a bill authorizing the city to seize 
 the property at once, ahead of condemnation, and it 
 was passed. We were afraid that Tammany might 
 come back, and the event proved that we were wise. 
 You bring up the people slowly to a reform pro- 
 gramme, particularly when it costs money. They will 
 pay for corruption with a growl, but seem to think 
 that virtue ought always to be had for nothing. It 
 makes the politicians' game easy. They steal the 
 money for improvements, and predict that reform 
 will raise the tax-rate. When the prophecy comes 
 true, they take the people back in their sheltering 
 embrace with an " I told you so ! " and the people 
 nestle there repentant. There was a housing con- 
 ference at which that part of the work was parcelled 
 out: the building of model tenements to the capi- 
 talists who formed the City and Suburban Homes 
 Company ; the erection of model lodging-houses 
 to D. O. Mills, the banker philanthropist, who was 
 anxious to help that way. I chose for the Good 
 Government clubs the demolition of the old tene- 
 ments. It was my chance. I hated them. A 
 law had been made the year before empowering 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 347 
 
 the Health Board to seize and destroy tenement- 
 house property that was a threat to the city's 
 health, but it had remained a dead letter. The 
 authorities hesitated to attack property rights, vested 
 rights. Charles G. Wilson, the President of the 
 Board, was a splendid executive, but he was a hold- 
 over Tammany appointee, and needed backing. 
 
 Now that Theodore Roosevelt sat in the Health 
 Board, fresh from his war on the police lodging- 
 rooms of which I told, they hesitated no longer. 
 I put before the Board a list of the sixteen worst 
 rear tenements in the city outside of the Bend, 
 and while the landlords held their breath in aston- 
 ishment, they were seized, condemned, and their 
 tenants driven out. The Mott Street Barracks 
 were among them. In 1888 the infant death-rate 
 among the 350 Italians they harbored had been 325 
 per thousand — that is to say, one-third of all the 
 babies died that year. That was the kind of evi- 
 dence upon which those rear tenements were ar- 
 raigned. Ninety-four of them, all told, were seized 
 that year, and in them there had been in four 
 years 956 deaths — a rate of 62.9 when the general 
 city death-rate was 24.63. I shall have once more, 
 and for the last time, to refer to " A Ten Years' 
 War " for the full story of that campaign. As I 
 said, it was great. 
 
 Conceive, if you can, the state of mind of a man 
 
348 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 to whom a dark, overcrowded tenement had ever 
 been as a personal affront, now suddenly finding 
 himself commissioned with letters of marque and 
 
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 rrMJ 
 
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 ppl' 
 
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 HlM 
 
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 Ilf 
 
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 Ximf 
 
 
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 The Mott Street Barracks. 
 
 reprisal, as it were, to seize and destroy the enemy 
 wherever found, not one at a time, but by blocks and 
 battalions in the laying out of parks. I fed fat my 
 ancient grudge and grew good humor enough to 
 last me for a dozen years in those two. They were 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 
 
 349 
 
 the years when, in spite of hard work, I began to 
 grow stout, and honestly, I think it was tearing down 
 tenements that did it. Directly or indirectly, I had 
 a hand in destroying seven whole blocks of them as 
 I count it up. I wish it had been seventy. 
 
 The landlords sued, but the courts sided with the 
 Health Board. When at last we stopped to take 
 breath we had fairly broken the back of the slum 
 and made precedents of our own that would last a 
 while. Mr. Roosevelt was personally sued twice, I 
 think, but that was all the good it did them. We 
 were having our innings that time, and there were a 
 lot of arrears to collect. The city paid for the prop- 
 erty that was taken, of course, and more than it ought 
 to have paid, to my way of thinking. The law gave 
 the owner of a tenement that was altogether unfit 
 just the value of the brick and timbers that were in 
 it. It was enough, for " unfit " meant murderous, 
 and why should a man have a better right to kill his 
 neighbor with a house than with an axe in the street ? 
 But the lawyers who counselled compromise bought 
 Gotham Court, one of the most hopeless slums in 
 the Fourth Ward, for nearly ^20,000. It was not 
 worth so many cents. The Barracks with their 
 awful baby death-rate were found to be mortgaged 
 to a cemetery corporation. The Board of Health 
 gave them the price of opening one grave for their 
 share, and tore down the rear tenements. A year 
 
350 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 or two later I travelled to Europe on an ocean steamer 
 with the treasurer of that graveyard concern. We 
 were ten days on the way, and I am afraid he did 
 not have altogether a good time of it. The ghost 
 of the Barracks would keep rising out of the deep 
 before us, sitting there in our steamer chairs, from 
 whichever quarter the wind blew. I suppose he 
 took it as a victory when the Court of Appeals de- 
 cided upon a technicality that the Barracks should 
 not have been destroyed ; but so did I, for they were 
 down by that time. The city could afford to pay. 
 We were paying for our own neglect, and it was a 
 good lesson. 
 
 I have said more than once in these pages that I 
 am not good at figuring, and I am not ; a child could 
 do better. For that very reason I am going to claim 
 full credit for every time I do a sum right. It may 
 not happen again. Twice during that spell, curi- 
 ously enough, did I downright distinguish myself in 
 that line. I shall never be able to tell you how; I 
 only know that I did it. Once was when I went 
 before the Board of Estimate and Apportionment to 
 oppose an increase in the appropriation for the Tombs 
 which the Commissioner of Correction had asked 
 for. His plea was that there had been a large in- 
 crease in the census of the prison, and he marched 
 up a column of figures to prove it. To the amaze- 
 ment of the Board, and really, if the truth be told, 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 
 
 3SI 
 
 of myself, I demonstrated clearly from his own fig- 
 ures that not only had there been no increase, but 
 that there could not be without criminally over- 
 
 Gotham Court. 
 
 crowding the wretched old prison, in which already 
 every cell had two inmates, and some three. The 
 exhibit was so striking that the Commissioner and his 
 bookkeeper retired in confusion. It was just the 
 
352 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 power of the facts again. I wanted to have the hor- 
 rid old pile torn down, and had been sitting up nights 
 acquainting myself with all that concerned it. Now 
 it is gone, and a good riddance to it. 
 
 The other computation was vastly more involved. 
 It concerned the schools, about which no one knew 
 anything for certain. The annual reports of the 
 Department of Education were models of how to say 
 a thing so that no one by any chance could under- 
 stand what it was about. It was possible to prove 
 from thein that, while there was notoriously a dearth 
 of school accommodation, while children knocked 
 vainly for admission and the Superintendent clam- 
 ored for more schools, yet there were ten or twenty 
 thousand seats to spare. But it was not possible to 
 get the least notion from them of what the real need 
 was. I tried for many months, and then set about 
 finding out for myself how many children who ought 
 to be in school were drifting about the streets. The 
 truant officers, professionally discreet, thought about 
 800. The Superintendent of Schools guessed at 
 8000. The officers of the Association for the 
 Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, with 
 an eye on the tenements, made it 150,000. I can- 
 vassed a couple of wards from the truant officers' 
 reports, and Dr. Tracy compared the showing with 
 the statistics of population. From the result I 
 reasoned that there must be about 50,000. They 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 353 
 
 corned me at the City Hall for it. It was all guess- 
 work they said, and so it was. We had first to 
 have a school census, and we got one, so that we 
 might know where we were at. But when we had 
 the result of that first census before us, behold ! it 
 showed that of 339,756 children of school age in the 
 city, 251,235 were accounted for on the roster of 
 public or private schools, 28,452 were employed, and 
 50,069 on the street or at home. So that, if I am 
 not smart at figuring, I may reasonably claim to be 
 a good guesser. 
 
 The showing that a lack of schools which threw 
 an army of children upon the street went hand in 
 hand with overcrowded jails made us get up and 
 demand that something be done. From the school 
 executive came the helpless suggestion that the thing 
 might be mended by increasing the classes in neigh- 
 borhoods where there were not enough schools 
 from sixty to seventy-five. Forty or forty-five pupils 
 is held to be the safe limit anywhere. But the time 
 had passed for such pottering. New York pulled 
 itself together and spent millions in building new 
 schools while " the system " was overhauled ; we 
 dragged in a truant school by threatening the city 
 authorities with the power of the State unless they 
 ceased to send truants to institutions that received 
 child criminals. But a man convinced against his 
 will is of the same opinion still ; we shall have to 
 
354 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 do that all over again next. My pet scheme was to 
 have trained oculists attached to the public schools, 
 partly as a means of overcoming stupidity — half of 
 what passes for that in the children is really the 
 teacher's ; the little ones are near-sighted ; they can- 
 not see the blackboard — partly also that they might 
 have an eye on the school buildings and help us 
 get rid of some where they had to burn gas all day. 
 That was upset by the doctors, who were afraid 
 that " private practice would be interfered with." 
 We had not c[uite got to the millennium yet. It 
 was so with our bill to establish a farm school to 
 win back young vagrants to a useful life. It was 
 killed at Albany with the challenge that we " had 
 had enough of reform in New York." And so we 
 had, as the events showed. Tammany came back. 
 
 But not to stay. We had secured a hold during 
 those three years which I think they little know of. 
 They talk at the Wigwam of the " school vote," and 
 mean the men" 'friends and kin of the teachers on 
 whom the machine has a grip, or thinks it has ; 
 but there is another school vote that is yet to be 
 heard from, when the generation that has had its 
 right to play restored to it comes to the polls. 
 That was the great gain of that time. It was the 
 thing I had in mind back of and beyond all the 
 rest. I was bound to kill the Bend, because it was 
 bad. I wanted the sunlight in there, but so that it 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 
 
 355 
 
 might shine on the children at play. That is a 
 child's right, and it is not to be cheated of it. And 
 when it is cheated 
 of it, it is not the 
 child but the com- 
 munity that is 
 robbed of that be- 
 side which all its 
 wealth is but tin- 
 sel and trash. For 
 men, not money, 
 make a country 
 great, and joyless 
 children do not 
 make good men. 
 
 So when the 
 Legislature, urged 
 by the Tenement 
 House Commis- 
 sion, made it law 
 that no public 
 school should ever 
 again be built in 
 New York without 
 an outdoor play- 
 ground, it touched ^ Tenement House Air-shaft. 
 
 the quick. Thereafter it was easy to rescue the small 
 parks from the landscape gardener by laying them 
 
356 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 under the same rule. It was well we did it, too, 
 for he is a dangerous customer, hard to get around. 
 Twice he has tried to steal one of the little parks 
 we laid out, the one that is called Seward Park, 
 from the children, and he " points with pride " al- 
 most to the playground in the other, which he laid 
 out so badly that it was a failure from the start. 
 However, we shall convert him yet; everything in 
 its season. 
 
 The Board of Education puzzled over its end of 
 it for a while. The law did not say how big the 
 playground should be, and there was no precedent. 
 No, there was not. I found the ke)^ to that puzzle, 
 at least one that fitted, when I was Secretary of the 
 Small Parks Committee. It was my last act as 
 agent of the Good Government clubs to persuade 
 Major Strong to appoint that committee. It made 
 short work of its task. We sent for the police to 
 tell us where they had trouble with the boys, and 
 why. It was always the same story : they had no 
 other place to play in than the street, and there 
 they broke windows. So began the trouble. It 
 ended in the police-station and the jail. The city 
 was building new schools by the score. We got a 
 list of the sites, and as we expected, they were 
 where the trouble was worst. Naturally so ; that 
 was where the children were. There, then, was our 
 field as a playground committee. Why not kill 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 357 
 
 two birds with one stone, and save money by mak- 
 ing them one? By hitching the school and the 
 boys' play together we should speedily get rid of 
 the truant. He was just there as a protest against 
 the school without play. 
 
 We asked the Board of Education to make their 
 school playgrounds the neighborhood recreation 
 centres. So they would not need to worry over 
 how big they should be, but just make them as 
 big as they could, whether on the roof or on the 
 ground. They listened, but found difficulties in 
 " the property." Odd, isn't it, this disposition of 
 the world to forever make of the means the end, 
 to glorify the establishment ! It was the same story 
 when I asked them to open the schools at night 
 and let in the boys to have their clubs there. The 
 saloon was bidding for them, and bidding high, but 
 the School Board hesitated because a window might 
 be broken or a janitor want extra pay for cleaning 
 up. Before a reluctant consent was given I had to 
 make a kind of promise that I would not appear 
 before the Board again to argue for throwing the 
 doors wider still. But it isn't going to keep me 
 from putting in the heaviest licks I can, in the 
 campaign that is coming, for turning the schools 
 over to the people bodily, and making of them the 
 neighborhood centre in all things that make for 
 good, including trades-union meetings and political 
 
358 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 discussions. Only so shall we make of our schools 
 real corner-stones of our liberties. So, also, we 
 shall through neighborhood pride restore some of 
 the neighborhood feeling, the home feeling that is 
 now lacking in our cities to our grievous loss. 
 Half the tenement-house population is always mov- 
 ing, and to the children the word " home " has no 
 meaning. Anything that will help change that will 
 be a great gain. And that old Board is gone long 
 since, anyhow. 
 
 The club prevailed in the end. At least one 
 school let it in, and though the boys did break a 
 window-pane that winter with a ball, they paid for 
 it like men, and that ghost was laid. The school 
 playground holds aloof yet from the neighborhood 
 except in the long vacation. But that last is some- 
 thing, and the rest is coming. It could not be com- 
 ing by any better road than the vacation schools, 
 which are paving the way for common sense every- 
 where. " Everything takes ten years," said Abram 
 S. Hewitt, when he took his seat as the chairman 
 of the Small Parks Committee. Ten years before, 
 when he was Mayor, he had put through the law 
 under which the Mulberry Bend had been at last 
 wiped out. We held our meetings at the City Hall, 
 where I had been spurned so often. All things 
 come to those who wait — and fight for them. Yes, 
 fight ! I say it advisedly. I have come to the 
 
ROOSEVELT COMES 359 
 
 time of life when a man does not lay about him 
 with a club unless he has to. But — eternal vigi- 
 lance is the price of liberty ! To be vigilant is to 
 sit up with a club. We, as a people, have provided 
 in the republic a means of fighting for our rights 
 and getting them, and it is our business to do it. 
 We shall never get them in any other way. Colo- 
 nel Waring was a wise man as well as a great man. 
 His declaration that he cleaned the streets of New 
 York, all prophecies to the contrary notwithstand- 
 ing, by " putting a man instead of a voter behind 
 every broom," deserves to be put on the monument 
 we shall build by and by to that courageous man, 
 for it is the whole gospel of municipal righteousness 
 in a nutshell. But he never said anything better 
 than when he advised his fellow-citizens to fight, 
 not to plead, for their rights. So we grow the kind 
 of citizenship that sets the world, or anyhow our 
 day, ahead. We will all hail the day when we shall 
 be able to lay down the club. But until it comes I 
 do not see that we have any choice but to keep a 
 firm grip on it. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 I TRY TO GO TO THE WAR FOR THE THIRD AND LAST 
 
 TIME 
 
 That which I have described as " sitting up with 
 a club " in a city like New York is bound to win 
 your fight if you sit up long enough, for it is to be 
 remembered that the politicians who oppose good 
 government are not primarily concerned about keep- 
 ing you out of your rights. They want the things 
 that make for their advantage ; first of all the offices 
 through which they can maintain their grip. After 
 that they will concede as many of the things you 
 want as they have to, and if you are not yourself 
 out for the offices, more than otherwise, though 
 never more than you wring out of them. They 
 really do not care if you do have clean streets, 
 good schools, parks, playgrounds, and all the things 
 which make for good citizenship because they give 
 the best part of the man a chance, though they 
 grudge them as a sad waste of money that might 
 be turned to use in " strengthening the organiza- 
 tion," which is the sum of all their self-seeking, 
 being their means of ever getting more and more. 
 
 360 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 361 
 
 Hence it is that a mere handful of men and women 
 who rarely or never had other authority than their 
 own unselfish purpose, have in all times, even the 
 worst, been able to put their stamp upon the com- 
 munity for good. I am thinking of the Felix 
 Adlers, the Dr. Rainsfords, the Josephine Shaw 
 Lowells, the Robert Ross McBurneys, the R. Ful- 
 ton Cuttings, the Father Doyles, the Jacob H. 
 Schiffs, the Robert W. de Forests, the Arthur von 
 Briesens, the F. Norton Goddards, the Richard Wat- 
 son Gilders, and their kind ; and thinking of them 
 brings to mind an opportunity I had a year or two 
 ago to tell a club of workmen what I thought of 
 them. It was at the Chicago Commons. I had 
 looked in on a Sunday evening upon a group of 
 men engaged in what seemed to me a singularly 
 unprofitable discussion of human motives. They 
 were of the school which professes to believe that 
 everything proceeds from the love of self, and they 
 spoke learnedly of the ego and all that ; but as I 
 listened the conviction grew, along with the feeling 
 of exasperation that sort of nonsense always arouses 
 in me, that they were just vaporing, and I told 
 them so. I pointed to these men and women I 
 have spoken of, some of them of great wealth — the 
 thing against which they seemed to have a special 
 grudge — and told them how they had given their 
 lives and their means in the cause of humanity 
 
362 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 without asking other reward than that of seeing 
 the world grow better, and the hard lot of some of 
 their fellow-men eased ; wherein they had succeeded 
 because they thought less of themselves than of 
 their neighbors, and were in the field, anyway, to 
 be of such use as they could. I told them how 
 distressed I was that upon their own admission 
 they should have been engaged in this discussion 
 four years without getting any farther, and I closed 
 with a remorseful feeling of having said more than 
 I intended and perhaps having made them feel bad. 
 But not they. They had listened to me throughout 
 with undisturbed serenity. When I had done, the 
 chairman said courteously that they were greatly 
 indebted to me for my frank opinion. Every man 
 was entitled to his own. And he could quite sym- 
 pathize with me in my inability to catch their point 
 of view. 
 
 " Because here," he added, " I have been reading 
 for ten years or more the things Mr. Riis writes in 
 his newspaper and in the magazines, and by which 
 he makes a living, and for the life of me I never 
 was able to understand how any one could be found 
 to pay for such stuff." 
 
 So there you have my measure as a reformer. 
 The meeting nodded gravely. I was apparently 
 the only one there who took it as a joke. 
 
 I spoke of the women's share in the progress we 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 363 
 
 made. A good big one it was. We should have 
 been floundering yet in the educational mud-puddle 
 we were in, had it not been for the women of New 
 York who went to Albany and literally held up the 
 Legislature, compelling it to pass our reform bill. 
 And not once but a dozen times, during Mayor 
 Strong's administration, when they had wearied of 
 me at the City Hall — I was not always persona 
 grata there with the reform administration — did I 
 find it the part of wisdom to send committees of 
 women instead to plead with the Mayor over his 
 five o'clock tea. They could worm a playground 
 or a small park out of him when I should have 
 met with a curt refusal and a virtual invitation to 
 be gone. In his political doldrums the Mayor did 
 not have a kindly eye to reformers ; but he was not 
 always able to make them out in petticoats. 
 
 The women prevailed at Albany by the power 
 of fact. They knew, and the legislators did not. 
 They received them up there with an indulgent 
 smile, but it became speedily apparent that they 
 came bristling with information about the schools 
 to which the empty old Tammany boast that New 
 York " had the best schools in the world " was not 
 an effective answer. In fact they came nearer 
 being the worst. I had myself had an experience 
 of that kind, when I pointed out in print that an 
 East Side school was so overrun with rats that it 
 
364 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 The School of the New Day. 
 
 was difficult to hear oneself think for their squeak- 
 ing in the dark "playground," when the children 
 were upstairs in their classes. The Board of Esti- 
 mate and Apportionment, which comprises the im- 
 portant officials of the city Government with the 
 Mayor as presiding officer, took umbrage at the 
 statement, and said in plain words that I lied and 
 that there were no rats. That was a piece of un- 
 thinking ignorance, for an old schoolhouse without 
 rats in it would be a rare thing anywhere ; but it 
 was impertinence, too, of a kind of which I had 
 had so much from the City Hall that I decided the 
 time had come for a demonstration. I got me a 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 365 
 
 rat trap, and prepared to catch one and have it sent 
 in to the Board, duly authenticated by affidavit as 
 hailing from Allen Street; but before I could carry 
 out my purpose the bottom fell out of the Tam- 
 many conspiracy of ignorance and fraud and left 
 us the way clear for three years. So I saved my 
 rat for another time. 
 
 This "fact," which was naturally my own weapon, 
 the contribution I was able to make from my own 
 profession and training, was in reality a tremen- 
 dously effective club before which nothing could or 
 can stand in the long run. If I can leave that con- 
 viction as a legacy to my brother reporters, I shall 
 feel that I have really performed a service. I 
 believe they do not half understand it, or they 
 would waste no printer's ink idly. The school 
 war was an illustration of it, all through. I was 
 at Pohce Headquarters, where I saw the East Side, 
 that had been orderly, becoming thievish and im- 
 moral. Going to the schools, I found them over- 
 crowded, ill ventilated, dark, without playgrounds, 
 repellent. Following up the boys, who escaped 
 from them in disgust — if indeed they were not 
 barred out ; the street swarmed with children for 
 whom there was not room — I saw them herded 
 at the prison to which Protestant truants were sent, 
 with burglars, vagrants, thieves, and " bad boys " 
 of every kind. They classified them according to 
 
366 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 size : four feet, four feet seven, and over four feet 
 seven ! No other way was attempted. At the 
 Catholic prison they did not even do that. They 
 kept them on a " footing of social equality " by 
 mixing them all up together ; and when in amaze- 
 ment I asked if that was doing right by the truant 
 who might be reasonably supposed to be in special 
 danger from such contact, the answer I got was 
 " would it be fair to the burglar to set him apart 
 with the stamp on him ? " I went back to the 
 office and took from the Rogues' Gallery a hand- 
 ful of photographs of boy thieves and murderers 
 and printed them in the Century Magazine with 
 a statement of the facts, under the heading, " The 
 Making of Thieves in New York." I quote the 
 concluding sentence of that article because it seemed 
 to me then, and it seems to me now, that there was 
 no getting away from its awful arraignment : — 
 
 " While we are asking at this end of the line if 
 it would be quite fair to the burglar to shut him 
 off from social intercourse with his betters, the 
 State Reformatory, where the final product of our 
 schools of crime is garnered, supplies the answer 
 year after year, unheeded. Of the thousands who 
 land there, barely one per cent kept good company 
 before coming. All the rest were the victims of 
 evil association, of corrupt environment. They 
 were not thieves by heredity ; they, were made. 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 367 
 
 And the manufacture goes on every day. The 
 street and the jail are the factories." 
 
 Upon the lay mind the argument took hold; that 
 of the official educator resisted it stubbornly for a 
 season. Two years later, when one of the School 
 Commissioners spoke indulgently of the burglars 
 and highway robbers in the two prisons as probably 
 guilty merely of " the theft of a top, or a marble, or 
 maybe a banana," in extenuation of the continued 
 policy of his department in sending truants there 
 in flat defiance of the State law that forbade the 
 mingling of thieves and truants, the police office 
 had once more to be invoked with its testimony. 
 I had been keeping records of the child crimes that 
 came up in the course of my work that year. They 
 began before the kindergarten age with burglary 
 and till-tapping. " Highwaymen " at six sounds 
 rather formidable, but there was no other name 
 for it. Two lads of that age had held up a third 
 and robbed him in the street; at seven and eight 
 there were seven housebreakers and two common 
 thieves ; at ten I had a burglar, one boy and four 
 girl thieves, two charged with assault and one with 
 forgery ; at eleven four burglars, two thieves with a 
 record, two charged with assault, a highway robber, 
 an habitual liar, and a suicide ; at twelve five burg- 
 lars, three thieves, two " drunks," three incendiaries, 
 three arrested for assault, and two suicides ; at 
 
368 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 thirteen five burglars, one with a record, five thieves, 
 five charged with assault, one "drunk," one forger; 
 at fourteen four burglars, seven thieves, one drunk 
 enough to fight a policeman, six highway robbers, 
 and ten charged with assault. And so on. The 
 street had borne its perfect crop, and they were 
 behind the bars every one, locked in with the boys 
 who had done nothing worse than play hooky. 
 
 It was a knock-out blow. Classification by meas- 
 urement had ceased at the first broadside; the last 
 gave us the truant school which the law demanded. 
 To make the most of it, we shall apparently have 
 to have a new deal. I tried to persuade the Chil- 
 dren's Aid Society to turn its old machinery to this 
 new work. Perhaps the George Junior Republic 
 would do better still. When there is room for 
 every boy on the school bench, and room to toss 
 a ball when he is off it, there will not be much 
 left of that problem to wrestle with ; but little or 
 much, the peril of the prison is too great to be 
 endured for a moment. 
 
 It must have been about that time that I received 
 a letter from an old friend who was in high glee 
 over a statement in some mas^azine that I had 
 evolved a " scientific theory " as to why boys go 
 to the bad in cities. It was plain that he was as 
 much surprised as he was pleased, and so was I 
 when I heard what it was all about. That which 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 
 
 369 
 
 they had pitched upon as science and theory was 
 the baldest recital of the facts as seen from Mul- 
 berry Street. Beyond putting two and two to- 
 gether, there was very little reasoning about it. 
 That such conditions as 
 were all about us should 
 result in making " toughs " 
 of the boys was not 
 strange. Rather, it would 
 have been strange had 
 anything else come of it. 
 With the home cor- 
 rupted by the tenement ; 
 the school doors closed 
 against them where the 
 swarms were densest, and 
 the children thrown upon 
 the street, there to take 
 their chance ; with honest play interdicted, every 
 natural right of the child turned into a means of 
 oppression, a game of ball become a crime for 
 which children were thrust into jail, indeed, shot 
 down like dangerous criminals when running away 
 from the policeman who pursued them ; ^ with dead- 
 letter laws on every hand breeding blackmail and 
 bringing the police and authority into disrepute ; 
 
 1 Such a case occurred on Thanksgiving Day, 1897. A great public 
 clamor arose and the policeman was sent to Sing Sing. 
 
 The Way to prevent the Manu- 
 facture of "Toughs." 
 
370 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 with the lawlessness of the street added to want 
 of rule at home, where the immigrant father looked 
 on helpless, himself dependent in the strange sur- 
 roundings upon the boy and no longer his master 
 — it seemed as if we had set out to deliberately 
 make the trouble under which we groaned. And 
 we were not alone in it. The shoe fits every large 
 city more or less snugly. I know, for I have had 
 a good deal to do with fitting it on the last two or 
 three years ; and often, when looking my audience 
 over in lecturing about Tony and his hardships, I 
 am thinking about Mulberry Street and the old 
 days when problems, civic or otherwise, were far- 
 thest from my mind in digging out the facts that 
 lay ready to the hand of the police reporter. 
 
 In him as a reporter there may be no special vir- 
 tue; but there is that in his work, in the haste and 
 the directness of it, which compels him always to 
 take the short cut and keeps it clear of crankery of 
 every kind. The " isms " have no place in a news- 
 paper office, certainly not in Mulberry Street. I 
 confess I was rather glad of it. I had no stomach 
 for abstract discussions of social wrongs ; I wanted 
 to right those of them that I could reach. I wanted 
 to tear down the Mulberry Bend and let in the light 
 so that we might the more readily make them out ; 
 the others could do the rest then. I used to say that 
 to a very destructive crank who would have nothing 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 371 
 
 less, upon any account, than the whole loaf. My 
 " remedies " were an abomination to him. The land- 
 lords should be boiled in oil to a man ; hanoing was 
 too good for them. Now he is a Tammany ofifice- 
 holder in a position where propping up landlord 
 greed is his daily practice and privilege, and he 
 thrives upon it. But I ought not to blame him. It 
 is precisely because of his kind that Tammany is 
 defenceless against real reform. It never can make 
 it out. That every man has his price is the language 
 of Fourteenth Street. They have no dictionary there 
 to enable them to understand any other ; and as a 
 short cut out of it they deny that there is any other. 
 It helped me vastly that my associations in the 
 office were most congenial. I have not often been 
 in accord with the editorial page of my own paper, 
 the Sun. It seemed as if it were impossible for any- 
 body to get farther apart in their views of most things 
 on the earth and off it than were my paper and I. 
 It hated and persecuted Beecher and Cleveland ; 
 they were my heroes. It converted me to Grant 
 by its opposition to him. The sign " Keep off the 
 grass ! " arouses in its editorial breast no desire to 
 lock up the man who planted it ; it does in mine. 
 Ten years and more I have striven in its columns to 
 make the tenement out a chief device of the devil, 
 and it must be that I have brought some over to my 
 belief ; but I have not converted the Sun. So that 
 
372 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 on the principle which I laid down before that I 
 must be always fighting with my friends, I ought to 
 have had a mighty good time of it there. And so in 
 fact I did. They let me have in pretty nearly every- 
 thing my own way, though it led us so far apart. 
 As time passed and the duties that came to me took 
 more and more of my time from my office work, I 
 found that end of it insensibly lightened to allow me 
 to pursue the things I believed in, though they did 
 not. No doubt the old friendship that existed be- 
 tween my immediate chief on the Evening Sun, 
 William McCloy, and myself, bore a hand in this. 
 Yet it could not have gone on without the assent 
 and virtual sympathy of the Danas, father and son ; 
 for we came now and then to a point where opposite 
 views clashed and proved irreconcilable. Then I 
 found these men, whom some deemed cynical, most 
 ready to see the facts as they were, and to see justice 
 done. 
 
 I like to think of my last meeting with Charles A. 
 Dana, the '' Old Chief," as he was always called in 
 the office. In all the years I was on the Sun I do 
 not think I had spoken with him a half dozen times. 
 When he wanted anything of me personally, his 
 orders were very brief and to the point. It was gen- 
 erally something — a report to be digested or the 
 story of some social experiment — which showed me 
 that in his heart he was faithful to his early love ; 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 373 
 
 he had been in his youth, as everybody knows, an 
 enthusiastic reformer, a member of the Brook Farm 
 Community. But if he thought I saw, he let no 
 sign escape him. He hated shams ; perhaps I was 
 on trial all the time. If so, I believe that he meant 
 to tell me in that last hand-shake that he had not 
 found me wanting. It was on the stairs in the 
 Sun office that we met. I was going up ; he was 
 coming down — going home to die. He knew it. 
 In me there was no suspicion of the truth when 
 I came upon him at the turn of the stairs, stum- 
 bling along in a way very unlike the usual springy 
 step of the Old Chief. I hardly knew him when 
 he passed, but as he turned and held out his hand 
 I saw that it was Mr. Dana, looking somehow older 
 than I had ever seen him, and changed. I took off 
 my hat and we shook hands. 
 
 " Well," he said, " have you reformed everything 
 to suit you, straightened out every kink in town ? " 
 
 " Pretty nearly," I said, falling into his tone of 
 banter ; " all except the Stm office. That is left 
 yet, and as bad as ever." 
 
 " Ha ! " he laughed, " you come on ! We are 
 ready for you. Come right along ! " And with 
 another hearty hand-shake he was gone. He never 
 saw the Sun office again. 
 
 It was the only time he had ever held out his 
 hand to me, after that first meeting of ours when 
 
374 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 I was a lonely lad, nearly thirty years before. That 
 time there was a dollar in it and I spurned it. 
 This time I like to believe his heart was in it. 
 And I took it gladly and gratefully. 
 
 The police helped — sometimes. More fre- 
 quently we were at odds, and few enough in the 
 rank and file understood that I was fighting for 
 them in fighting the department. A friend came 
 into my office, laughing, one day, and told me that 
 he had just overheard the doorman at Police Head- 
 quarters say, as he saw me pass : — 
 
 " Ugh ! the hypocrite ! See him take off his hat 
 and then lay us out cold in his paper when he gets 
 the chance." 
 
 He referred to my old-country habit of raising 
 the hat in salutation instead of merely nodding or 
 touching the brim. No doubt he expressed a feel- 
 ing that was quite general at the time. But after 
 Mulberry Street had taken notice of Roosevelt's 
 friendship for me there was a change, and then it 
 went to the other extreme. It never quite got over 
 the fact that he did not " ring me in " on President 
 McKinley and the Government, or at least make 
 me his private secretary and deputy boss of the 
 Empire State while he was Governor. The Mul- 
 berry Street idea of friendship includes the loaves 
 and fishes first and last, and " pull " is the Joss it 
 worships. In fact I had several times to explain 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 375 
 
 that Mr. Roosevelt had not " gone back on me " 
 to save his political reputation. When at a public 
 meeting he once spoke of me as his friend, a 
 dozen policemen brought me copies of the paper 
 containing " the notice," with a frankly expressed 
 wish to be remembered when I came into my own. 
 About that time, being in the neighborhood, I 
 strayed into the Bend one day to enjoy the sun- 
 light there and the children sporting in it. At the 
 curb stood a big policeman leisurely peeling an 
 orange, to which he had helped himself from a 
 cringing Italian's cart. I asked him how were 
 things in the Bend since the park had come. He 
 eyed me very coldly, and said, " Bad, very bad." 
 At that I expressed my astonishment, saying that 
 I was a reporter at Police Headquarters and had 
 understood differently. 
 
 " What paper ? " he grunted insolently. I told 
 him. He bestowed a look of mingled pity and 
 contempt upon me. 
 
 " Nix ! mine friend," he said, spreading his feet 
 farther apart and tossing the peel at the Italian, 
 who grinned with delight at such condescension. I 
 regarded him expectantly. He was a very aggra- 
 vating chap. 
 
 " Did you say you were at Police Headquarters — 
 for the Sun ? " he observed at length. 
 
 " Yes ! " He shook his head. 
 
376 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 " Nixie ! not guilty ! " he said tauntingly. 
 
 " Why, what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Haven't you heard of Mr. Riis, Jacob Riis ? " 
 
 I said I had. 
 
 " The Governor's friend ? " 
 
 " Yes ; what of it ? " 
 
 " Well, ain't he at Headquarters for the Sun ? " 
 
 I said that was so. 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 I took out my card and handed it to him. " I 
 am that man," I said. 
 
 For a fraction of a second the policeman's jaw 
 dropped; but he was a thoroughbred. His heels 
 came together before, as it seemed, he could have 
 read my name ; he straightened up. The half-peeled 
 orange fell from his hand and rolled into the gutter, 
 covertly speeded by a dextrous little kick. The 
 unhappy Italian, believing it a mishap, made haste 
 to select the biggest and juiciest fruit on his stand, 
 and held it out with a propitiatory bow, but he 
 spurned him haughtily away. 
 
 " These dagoes," he said, elaborately placing my 
 card in the sweat-band of his hat, "ain't got no man- 
 ners. It's a hard place for a good man down here. 
 It's time I was a roundsman. You can do it. 
 You've got de 'pull.'" 
 
 When Roosevelt had gone to Washington to 
 help fit out the navy for the war with Spain, I spent 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 377 
 
 a part of the winter there with him, and Mulberry 
 Street took it for granted that I had at last been 
 " placed" as I should have been long before. There 
 was great amazement when I came back to take my 
 old place. The truth was that I had gone partly to 
 observe what went on at the capital for my paper, 
 and partly to speed on the war, in which I was a 
 hearty believer from the first. It was to me a 
 means, first and last, of ending the murder in Cuba. 
 One of the very earliest things I had to do with as 
 a reporter was the Virginitis massacre, and ever 
 since it had been bloodshed right along. It was 
 time to stop it, and the only way seemed to wrest 
 the grip of Spain from the throat of the island. I 
 think I never quite got over the contempt I con- 
 ceived for Spain and Spanish ways when I read as 
 a boy, in Hans Christian Andersen's account of his 
 travels in the country of the Dons, that the shep- 
 herds brought butter from the mountains in sheep's 
 intestines and measured them off in lengths de- 
 manded by the customers by tying knots upon 
 them. What was to be expected from a country 
 that sold butter by the yard ? As the event showed, 
 it ran its navies after the same fashion and was 
 justly punished. I made friends that winter with 
 Dr. Leonard Wood, whom we all came to know and 
 admire afterwards as General and Governor Wood ; 
 and a fine fellow he was. He was Roosevelt's 
 
378 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 friend and physician, and we spent many strenuous 
 hours together, being in that mood. 
 
 For the third time in my Ufe, and the last, I 
 wanted to go to the war, when they went, and oh ! 
 so badly. Not to fight, — I had had all I needed of 
 that at home, — but to tell the truth about what was 
 going on in Cuba. The Outlook offered me that 
 post, and the Sun agreed heartily ; but once more 
 the door was barred against me. Two of my chil- 
 dren had scarlet fever, my oldest son had gone to 
 Washington trying to enlist with the Rough Riders, 
 and the one next in line was engineering to get into 
 the navy on his own hook.* My wife raised no 
 objection to my going, if it was duty; but her tears 
 fell silently — and I stayed. It was " three times 
 and out." I shall never go to the war now unless 
 in defence of my own home, which may God forbid. 
 Within a year I knew that, had I gone then, I should 
 most likely not have returned. I had received notice 
 that to my dreams of campaigning in that way there 
 was an end. Thankful that I had been spared, I 
 yet took leave of them with a sigh ; most illogically, 
 for I hate the sight of human suffering and of brutal 
 passions aroused. But deep down in my heart there 
 is the horror of my Viking forefathers of dying in 
 bed, unable to strike back, as it were. I know it is 
 wicked and foolish, but all my life I have so wished 
 to get on a horse with a sword, and slam in just 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 379 
 
 once, like another Sheridan. I, who cannot sit on a 
 horse ! Even the one Roosevelt got me at Montauk 
 that was warranted " not to bite or scratch " ran 
 away with me. So it is foolishness, plain to see. 
 Yet, so I might have found out which way I would 
 really have run when the call came. I do hope the 
 right way, but I never have felt quite sure. 
 
 The casualties of war are not all on the battle- 
 field. The Cuban campaign wi"ecked a promising 
 career as a foreign correspondent which I had been 
 building up for some ten or fifteen years with toilsome 
 effort. It was for a Danish newspaper I wrote with 
 much approval, but when the war came, they did not 
 take the same view of things that I did, and fell to 
 suppressing or mutilating my letters, whereupon our 
 connection ceased abruptly. My letters were, ex- 
 plained the editor to me a year or two later when I 
 saw him in Copenhagen, so — er-r — ultra-patriotic, 
 so — er-r — youthful in their enthusiasm, that — 
 huh ! I interrupted him with the remark that I was 
 glad we were young enough yet in my country to 
 get up and shout for the flag in a fight, and left him 
 to think it over. They must have aged suddenly 
 over there, for they were not that way when I was a 
 boy. The real fact was that somehow they could 
 not get it into their heads that a European bully 
 could be whipped in one round by "the States." 
 They insisted on printing ridiculous despatches 
 
38o THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 about Spanish victories. I think there was some- 
 thing about codfish, too, something commercial 
 about corks and codfish — Iceland keeping Spain 
 on a fish diet in Lent, in return for which she corked 
 the Danish beer — I have forgotten the particulars. 
 The bottom fact was a distrust of the United States 
 that was based upon a curiously stubborn ignorance, 
 entirely without excuse in a people of high intel- 
 ligence like the Danes. I tried hard as a corre- 
 spondent to draw a reasonable, human picture of 
 American affairs, but it seemed to make no im- 
 pression. They would jump at the Munchausen 
 stories that are always afloat, as if America were 
 some sort of menagerie and not a Christian country. 
 I think nothing ever aggravated me as did an instance 
 of that kind the year Ben Butler ran for the Presi- 
 dency. I had been trying in my letters to present 
 the political situation and issues fairly, and was 
 beginning to feel that they must understand, when 
 I received a copy of my paper from Copenhagen and 
 read' there a "life" of General Butler, which con- 
 densed, ran something like this : — 
 
 " Mr. Butler was an ambitious young lawyer, 
 shrewd and full of bold schemes for enriching him- 
 self. When the war with the South broke out, he 
 raised all the money he could and fitted out a fleet 
 of privateers. With this he sailed for New Orleans, 
 captured the city, and, collecting all the silver spoons 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 381 
 
 it contained, freighted his vessels with them, and 
 returned to the North. Thus he laid the founda- 
 tion for his great fortune, but achieved lasting un- 
 popularity in the South, which will prevent his 
 election to the Presidency." 
 
 I am not joking. That was how the story of the 
 silver spoons looked in Danish a quarter of a cen- 
 tury after the war. Really, now, what would you 
 have done ? I laughed and — well ! made remarks 
 by turns, and in the end concluded that there was 
 nothing else that could be done except buckle to 
 and try again ; which I did. 
 
 If I could not go to the war, I could at least go 
 electioneering with Roosevelt when he came back 
 and try to help him out the best I knew how in 
 matters that touched the poor and their life, once 
 he sat in Cleveland's chair in Albany. I do not 
 think he felt that as an added dignity, but I did 
 and I told him so, whereat he used to laugh a little. 
 But there was nothing to laugh at. They are men 
 of the same stamp, not saints any more than the 
 rest of us, but men with minds and honest wills, if 
 they have different ways of doing things. I wish 
 some Cleveland would come along again soon and 
 sive me another chance to vote the ticket which 
 Tammany obstructs with its impudent claim that it 
 is the Democratic party. As for Roosevelt, few were 
 nearer to him, I fancy, than I, even at Albany. No 
 
382 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 doubt he made his mistakes Uke the rest of us, and 
 when he did there were not wanting critics to make 
 the most of it. I wish they had been half as ready 
 to lend him a hand. We might have been farther 
 on the road then. I saw how faithfully he labored. 
 I was his umpire with the tailors, with the drug 
 clerks, in the enforcement of the Factory Law 
 against sweaters, and I know that early and late he 
 had no other thought than how best to serve the 
 people who trusted him. I want no better Gov- 
 ernor than that, and I guess we shall want him a 
 long time before we get one as good. 
 
 I found out upon our electioneering tours that 
 I w^as not a good stump-speaker, especially on the 
 wing with five-minute stops of the train. It used 
 to pull out with me inwardly raging, all the good 
 things I meant to say unsaid. The politicians knew 
 that trick better, and I left the field to them speed- 
 ily. Thereafter I went along just for company. 
 Only two or three times did I rise to the occasion. 
 Once when I spoke in the square at Jamestown, 
 N.Y., where I had worked as a young lad and 
 trapped muskrats in the creek for a living. The 
 old days came back to me as I looked upon that 
 mighty throng, and the cheers that arose from it 
 told me that I had " caught on." I was wondering 
 whether by any chance the old ship captain who 
 finished me as a lecturer once ' was in it, but he 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 383 
 
 was not ; he was dead. Another time was in Flush- 
 ing, Long Island. There was not i-oom in the hall, 
 and they sent me out to talk to the crowd in the 
 street. The sight of it, with the flickering torch- 
 light upon the sea of upturned faces, took me some- 
 how as nothing ever had, and the speech I made 
 from the steps, propped up by two policemen, took 
 the crowd, too ; it cheered so that Roosevelt within 
 stopped and thought some enemy had captured the 
 meeting. When he was gone, with the spirit still 
 upon me I talked to the meeting in the hall till 
 it rose and shouted. My political pet enemy from 
 Richmond Hill was on the platform and came over 
 to embrace me. We have been friends since. The 
 memory of that evening lingers yet in Flushing, I 
 am told. 
 
 A picture from that day's trip through Long 
 Island will ever abide on my mind. The train was 
 about to pull out from the station in Greenport, 
 when the public school children came swarming 
 down to see " Teddy." He leaned out from the 
 rear platform, grasping as many of the little hands 
 as he could, while the train hands did their best to 
 keep the track clear. Way back in the jostling, 
 cheering crowd I made out the slim figure of a pale, 
 freckled little girl in a worn garment, struggling 
 eagerly but hopelessly to get near him. The 
 stronger children pushed her farther back, and her 
 
384 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 mournful face was nearly the last of them all when 
 Roosevelt saw her. Going down the steps even as 
 the train started, he made a quick dash, clearing a 
 path through the surging tide to the little girl, and 
 taking her hand, gave it the heartiest shake of all, 
 then sprinted for the departing car and caught it. 
 The last I saw of Greenport was the poor little girl 
 holding tight the hand her hero had shaken, with 
 her face all one sunbeam of joy. 
 
 I know just how she felt, for I have had the same 
 experience. One of the things I remember with a 
 pleasure which the years have no power to dim is 
 my meeting with Cardinal Gibbons some years ago. 
 They had asked me to come to Baltimore to speak 
 for the Fresh Air Fund, and to my great delight I 
 found that the Cardinal was to preside. I had 
 always adrhired him at a distance, but during the 
 fifteen minutes' talk we had before the lecture he 
 won my heart entirely. He asked me to forgive 
 him if he had to go away before I finished my 
 speech, for he had had a very exhausting service 
 the day before, " and I am an old man, on the 
 sunny side of sixty," he added as if in apology. 
 
 " On the shady side, you mean," amended the 
 Presbyterian clergyman who was on the committee. 
 The Cardinal shook his head, smiling. 
 
 " No, doctor! The sunny side — nearer heaven." 
 
 The meeting was of a kind to inspire even the 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 385 
 
 dullest speaker. When I finished my plea for the 
 children and turned around, there sat the Cardinal 
 yet behind me, though it was an hour past his bed- 
 time. He came forward and gave me his blessing 
 then and there. I was never so much touched and 
 moved. Even my mother, stanch old Lutheran that 
 she is, was satisfied when I told her of it, though, in 
 the nature of things, the idea of her son consorting 
 in that way with principalities and powers in the 
 enemy's camp must have been a shock to her. 
 
 Speaking of which, reminds me of the one brief 
 glimpse into the mysteries ■ of the universe I had 
 while in Galesburg, 111., the same year. I had been 
 lecturing at Knox College, of which my friend John 
 Finley was the President. It rained before the 
 meeting, but when we came out, the stars shone 
 brightly, and I was fired with a sudden desire to see 
 them through the observatory telescope. The pro- 
 fessor of astronomy took me into the dark dome 
 and pointed the glass at Saturn, which I knew as a 
 scintillating point of light, said to be a big round 
 ball like our earth, and had taken on trust as a mat- 
 ter of course. But to see it hanging there, white 
 and big as an apple, suspended within its broad and 
 shining ring, was a revelation before which I stood 
 awe-stricken and dumb. I gazed and gazed ; be- 
 tween the star and its ring I caught the infinite 
 depth of black space beyond; I seemed to see 
 
386 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 almost the whirl, the motion ; to hear the morning 
 stars sina; together — and then like a flash it was 
 gone. Crane my neck on my ladder as I might I 
 could not get sight of it. 
 
 " But where did she go ? " I said, half to myself. 
 Far down in the darkness came the old professor's 
 deep voice : — 
 
 " That time you saw the earth move." 
 
 And so I did. The clockwork that made the 
 dome keep up with the motion of the stars — of 
 our world rather — had run down, and when Saturn 
 passed out of my sight, as I thought, it was the 
 earth instead which I literally saw move. 
 
 And now that I am on my travels let me cross 
 the ocean long enough to say that my digging 
 among the London slums one summer only served 
 to convince me that their problem is the same as 
 ours, and is to be solved along the same lines. They 
 have their ways, and we have ours, and each has 
 something to learn from the other. We copied our 
 law that enabled us to tear down slum tenements 
 from the English statute under which they cleared 
 large areas over yonder long before we got to work. 
 And yet in their poor streets — in " Christian 
 Street" of all places — I found families living in 
 apartments entirely below the sidewalk grade. I 
 found children poisoned by factory fumes in a 
 charitable fold, and people huddled in sleeping- 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 387 
 
 rooms as I had never seen it in New York. And 
 when I asked why the police did not interfere, they 
 looked at me, uncomprehending, and retorted that 
 they were on their own premises — the factory, too 
 — and where did the police come in? I told them 
 that in New York they came in when and where 
 they saw fit, and systematically in the middle of the 
 night so that they might get at the exact facts. As 
 for our cave-dwellers, we had got rid of them a long 
 time since by the simple process of dragging out 
 those who wouldn't go and shutting the cellar 
 doors against them. It had to be done and it was 
 done, and it settled the matter. 
 
 " I thought yours was a free country," said my 
 policeman conductor. 
 
 "So it is," I told him, "freedom to poison your- 
 self and your neighbor excepted." He shook his 
 head, and we went on. 
 
 But these were mere divergences of practice. 
 The principle is not affected. It was clear enough 
 that in London, as in New York, it was less a ques- 
 tion of transforming human nature in the tenant 
 than of reforming it in the landlord. At St. Giles 
 I found side by side with the work-house a church, 
 a big bath and wash-house, and a school. It was 
 the same at Seven Dials. At every step it recalled 
 the Five Points. To the one as to the other, 
 steeped in poverty and crime, had come the road- 
 
388 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 builder, the missionary, the school-teacher, and let 
 light in together. And in their track was following, 
 rather faster there than here as yet, the housing 
 reformer with his atoning scheme of philanthropy 
 and five per cent. That holds the key. In the 
 last analysis it is a question of how we rate the 
 brotherhood, what per cent we will take. My 
 neighbor at table in my London boarding-house 
 meant that, though he put it in a way all his own. 
 He was a benevolent enough crank, but no friend 
 of preaching. Being a crank, he condemned preach- 
 ers with one fell swoop: — 
 
 " The parsons ! " he said ; " my 'evings, what hare 
 they ? In hall me life hi've known only two that 
 were fit to be in the pulpit." 
 
 Returning to my own country, I found the con- 
 viction deepening wherever the slum had got a 
 grip, that it was the problem not only of govern- 
 ment but of humanity. In Chicago they are set- 
 ting limits to it with parks and playgrounds and 
 the home restored. In Cincinnati, in Cleveland, in 
 Boston, they are bestirring themselves. Indeed, in 
 Boston they have torn down more foul tenements 
 than did we in the metropolis, and with less sur- 
 render to the slum landlord. In New York a 
 citizens' movement paved the way for the last Tene- 
 ment-House Commission, which has just finished 
 its great work, and the movement is warrant that 
 
WAR FOR THE LAST TIME 389 
 
 the fruits of that work will not be lost. Listen to 
 the arraignment of the tenement by that Commis- 
 sion, appointed by the State : — 
 
 "All the conditions which surround childhood, 
 youth, and womanhood in New York's crowded 
 tenement quarters make for unrighteousness. They 
 also make for disease. . . . From the tenements 
 there comes a stream of sick, helpless people to 
 our hospitals and dispensaries . . . from them also 
 comes a host of paupers and charity seekers. Most 
 terrible of all . . . the fact that, mingled with the 
 drunken, the dissolute, the improvident, the diseased, 
 dwell the great mass of the respectable workingmen 
 of the city with their families." 
 
 This after all the work of twenty years ! Yet 
 the work was not wasted, for at last we see the 
 truth. Seeing, it is impossible that the monstrous 
 wrong should go unrighted and government of the 
 people endure, as endure it will, I know. We have 
 only begun to find out what it can do for mankind 
 in the day when we shall all think enough about 
 the common good, the res pudlica, to forget about 
 ourselves. 
 
 In that day, too, the boss shall have ceased from 
 troubling. However gross he wax in our sight, he 
 has no real substance. He is but an ugly dream 
 of political distemper. Sometimes when I hear 
 him spoken of with bated breath, I think of th§ 
 
390 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Irish teamster who went to the priest in a fright ; 
 he had seen a ghost on the church wall as he passed 
 it in the night. 
 
 " And what was it like ? " asked the priest. 
 
 " It was like nothing so much as a big ass," said 
 Patrick, wide-eyed. 
 
 " Go home, Pat ! and be easy. You've seen 
 your own shadow." 
 
 But I am tired now and want to go home to 
 mother and rest awhile. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 There was a heavy step on the stairs, a rap that 
 sounded much as if an elephant had knocked 
 against the jamb in passing, and there in the door 
 stood a six-foot giant, calmly surveying me, as if 
 I were a specimen bug stuck on a pin for inspec- 
 tion, instead of an ordinary man-person with no 
 more than two legs. 
 
 " Well ? " I said, groping helplessly among the 
 memories of the past for a clew to the apparition. 
 Somewhere and sometime I had seen it before; 
 that much I knew and no more. 
 
 The shape took a step into the room. " I am 
 Jess," it said simply, " Jess Jepsen from Lustrup." 
 
 " Lustrup ! " I pushed back papers and pen and 
 strode toward the giant to pull him up to the light. 
 Lustrup ! Talk about seven league boots ! that 
 stride of mine was four thousand miles long, if it 
 was a foot. It spanned the stormy Atlantic and 
 the cold North Sea and set me down in sight of 
 the little village of straw-thatched farm-houses 
 where I played in the long ago, right by the dam 
 
 391 
 
392 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 in the lazy brook where buttercups and forget-me- 
 nots nodded ever over the pool, and the pewit built 
 its nest in spring. Just beyond, the brook issued 
 forth from the meadows to make a detour around 
 the sunken walls of the old manse and lose itself 
 in the moor that stretched toward the western hills. 
 Lustrup ! Oh, yes ! I pushed my giant into a 
 chair so that I might have a look at him. 
 
 Ribe, in my Childhood. 
 Seen from Elisabeth's garden. 
 
 He was just like the landscape of his native 
 plain ; big and calm and honest. Nothing there 
 to hide; couldn't if it tried. And, like his village, 
 he smelled of the barn-yard. He was a driver, he 
 told me, earning wages. But he had his evenings 
 to himself; and so he had come to find, through 
 me, a school where he might go and learn English. 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 393 
 
 Just SO ! It was Lustrup all over. I remembered 
 as though it were yesterday the time I went up to 
 have a look at the dam I hadn't seen for thirty 
 years, and the sun-fish and the pewit so anxiously 
 soHcitous for her young, and found the brook 
 turned aside and the western earth-wall of the 
 manse, which it skirted, all gone ; and the story 
 the big farmer, Jess Jepsen's father, told me with 
 such quiet pride, standing there, of how because 
 of trouble made by the Germans at the " line " a 
 mile away the cattle business had run down and 
 down until the farm didn't pay ; how he and " the 
 boy " unaided, working patiently year by year with 
 spade and shovel, had dug down the nine acres of 
 dry upland, moved the wall into the bottoms and 
 turned the brook, making green meadow of the 
 sandy barren, and saving the farm. The toil of 
 twenty years had broken the old man's body, but 
 his spirit was undaunted as ever. There was a 
 gleam of triumph in his eye as he shook his fist 
 at the " line " post on the causeway. " We beat 
 them," he said ; " we did." 
 
 They did. I had heard it told many times how 
 this brave little people, driven out of the German 
 market, had conquered the English and held it 
 against the world, three times in one man's lifetime 
 making a new front to changed industrial condi- 
 tions ; turning from grain-raising to cattle on the 
 
394 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 hoof, again to slaughtered meat, and once more 
 to dairy-farming, and holding always their own. 
 How, robbed of one-third of their country by a 
 faithless foe, they had set about with indomitable 
 energy to reclaim the arid moor, and in one genera- 
 tion laid under the plough or planted as woodland 
 as great an area as that which had been stolen from 
 them. Ay, it was a brave record, a story to make 
 one proud of being of such a people. I, too, heard 
 the pewit's plaint in my childhood and caught the 
 sun-fish in the brook. I was a boy when they 
 planted the black post at the line and watered it 
 with the blood of my countrymen. Gray-haired 
 and with old-time roots in a foreign soil, I dream 
 with them yet of the day that shall see it pulled up 
 and hurled over the river where my fathers beat 
 back the southern tide a thousand years. 
 
 Jess .'' He went away satisfied. He will be 
 there, when needed. His calm eyes warranted 
 that. And I — I went back to the old home, to 
 Denmark and to my mother; because I just couldn't 
 stay away any longer. 
 
 We had wandered through Holland, counting 
 the windmills, studying the " explications " set forth 
 in painfully elaborate English on its old church 
 walls with the information for travellers that further 
 particulars were to be obtained of the sexton, who 
 might be found with the key " in the neighborhood 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 395 
 
 No. 5." We had argued with the keeper of the 
 Prinzenhof in Delft that William the Silent could 
 not possibly have been murdered as he said he 
 was — that he must have come down the stairs and 
 not gone across the hall when the assassin shot him, 
 as any New York police reporter could tell from 
 the bullet-hole that is yet in the wall — and thereby 
 wounding his patriotic pride so deeply that an extra 
 fee was required to soothe it. I caught him looking 
 after us as we went down the street and shaking his 
 head at those " wild Americans " who accounted 
 nothing holy, not even the official record of murder 
 done while their ancestors were yet savages roaming 
 the plains. We had laughed at the coal-heavers 
 on the frontier carrying coal in baskets up a ladder 
 to the waiting engine and emptying it into the 
 fender. And now, after parting company with my 
 fellow-traveller at Hamburg, I was nearing the land 
 where once more I should see old Dannebrog, the 
 flag that fell from heaven with victory to the hard- 
 pressed Danes. Literally out of the sky it fell in 
 their sight, the historic fact being apparently that 
 the Christian bishops had put up a job with the 
 Pope to wean the newly converted Danes away 
 from their heathen pirate flag and found their 
 opportunity in one of the crusades the Danes 
 undertook on their own hook into what is now 
 Prussia. The Pope had sent a silken banner with 
 
396 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 the device of a white cross in red, and at the right 
 moment, when the other was taken, the priest threw 
 it down from a cliff into the thick of the battle and 
 turned its tide. Ever after, it was the flag of the 
 Danes, and their German foes had reason to hate 
 it. Here in Slesvig, through which I was travel- 
 ling, to display it was good cause for banishment. 
 But over yonder, behind the black post, it was 
 waiting, and my heart leaped to meet it. Have I 
 not felt the thrill, when wandering abroad, at the 
 sight of the stars and stripes suddenly unfolding, 
 the flag of my home, of my manhood's years and 
 of my pride ? Happy he who has a flag to love. 
 Twice blest he who has two, and such two. 
 
 We have yet a mile to the frontier and, with the 
 panorama of green meadows, of placid rivers, and of 
 long-legged storks gravely patrolling the marshes in 
 search of frogs and lizards, passing by our car-win- 
 dow, I can stop to tell you how this filial pride in 
 the flag of my fathers once betrayed me into the 
 hands of the Philistines. It was in London, during 
 the wedding of the Duke of York. The king 
 and queen of Denmark were in town, and wher- 
 ever one went was the Danish flag hung out in 
 their honor. Riding under one on top of a Hol- 
 born bus, I asked a cockney in the seat next to 
 mine what flag it was. I wanted to hear him praise 
 it, that was why I pretended not to know. He sur- 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 397 
 
 veyed it with the calm assurance of his kind, and 
 made reply : — 
 
 " That, ah, yes ! It is the sign of St. John's ham- 
 bulance corps, the haccident flag, don't you know," 
 and he pointed to an ambulance officer just passing 
 with the cross device on his arm. The Dannebrog 
 the "haccident flag"! What did I do.? What 
 would you have done ? I just fumed and suppressed 
 as well as I could a desire to pitch that cockney into 
 the crowds below, with his pipe and his miserable 
 ignorance. But I had to go down to do it. 
 
 But there is the hoary tower of the old Domkirke 
 in which I was baptized and confirmed and married, 
 rising out of the broad fields, and all the familiar 
 landmarks rushing by, and now the train is slow- 
 ing up for the station, and a chorus of voices shout 
 out the name of the wanderer. There is mother in 
 the throng with the glad tears streaming down her 
 dear old face, and half the town come out to see 
 her bring home her boy, every one of them sharing 
 her joy, to the very letter-carrier who brought her 
 his letters these many years and has grown fairly to 
 be a member of the family in the doing of it. At 
 last the waiting is over, and her faith justified. Dear 
 old mother! Gray-haired I return, sadly scotched 
 in many a conflict with the world, yet ever thy boy, 
 thy home mine. Ah me ! Heaven is nearer to us 
 than we often dream on earth. 
 
398 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 1 
 
 ■i 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 .■:-;• 
 
 Ul 
 
 MM lift: 
 
 
 If 
 
 f^ 
 
 
 ■: " es (' 
 
 
 
 Bi 
 
 • 
 
 il'^li'sifaiMi. 
 
 
 
 ■'vt.'V^r:^;^ ■/ /'-^^BSi 
 
 At Home in the Old Town. 
 The last time we were all together. 
 
 How shall I tell you of the old town by the North 
 Sea that was the home of the Danish kings in the 
 days when kings led their armies afield and held 
 their crowns by the strength of their grip ? Shall I 
 paint to you the queer, crooked streets with their 
 cobblestone pavements and tile-roofed houses where 
 the swallow builds in the hall and the stork on the 
 ridge-pole, witness both that peace dwells within ? 
 For it is well known that the stork will not abide 
 with a divided house ; and as for the swallow, a 
 plague of boils awaits the graceless hand that dis- 
 turbs its nest. When the Saviour hung upon the 
 cross, did it not perch upon the beam and pour forth 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 399 
 
 its song of love and pity to His dying ear, " Soothe 
 Him ! soothe Him " ? The stork from the meadow 
 cried, " Strength Him ! strength Him ! " but the 
 wicked pewit, beholding the soldiers with their 
 spears, cried, " Pierce Him! pierce Him!" Hence 
 stork and swallow are the friends of man, while the 
 pewit dwells in exile, fleeing ever from his presence 
 with its lonesome cry. 
 
 Will you wander with me through the fields where 
 the blue-fringed gentian blooms with the pink bell- 
 heather, and the bridal torch nods from the brook- 
 side, bending its stately head to the west wind that 
 sweeps ever in from the sea with touch as soft as of 
 a woman's hand ? Flat and uninteresting ? Yes, if 
 you will. If one sees only the fields. My children 
 saw them and longed back to the hills of Long- 
 Island; and in their cold looks I felt the tugging 
 of the chain which he must bear through life who 
 exiled himself from the land of his birth, however 
 near to his heart that of his choice and his adoption. 
 I played in these fields when I was a boy. I fished 
 in these sti^eams and built fires on their banks in 
 spring to roast potatoes in, the like of which I have 
 never tasted since. Here I lay dreaming of the 
 great and beautiful world without, watching the sky- 
 lark soar ever higher with its song of triumph and 
 joy, and here I learned the sweet lesson of love that 
 has echoed its jubilant note through all the years, 
 
400 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 and will until we reach the golden gate, she and I, to 
 which love holds the key. 
 
 Uninteresting! Say you so? But linger here 
 with me, casting for pickerel among the water-lilies 
 until the sun sets red and big over the sea yon- 
 der, and you shall see a light upon these meadows 
 where the grass is as fine silk, that is almost as if 
 it were not of earth. And as we walk home 
 through the long Northern twilight, listening to 
 the curlew's distant call ; with the browsing sheep 
 looming large against the horizon upon the green 
 hill where stood the old kings' castle, and the gray 
 Dom rearing its lofty head over their graves, teem- 
 ing with memories of centuries gone and past, you 
 shall learn to know the poetry of this Danish 
 summer that holds the hearts of its children with 
 such hoops of steel. 
 
 At the south gate the " gossip benches " are filled. 
 The old men smoke their pipes and doff their caps 
 to " the American " with the cheery welcome of 
 friends who knew and spanked him with hearty 
 good will when as " a kid " he absconded with their 
 boats for a surreptitious expedition up to the lake. 
 Those boats ! heavy, flat-bottomed, propelled with a 
 pole that stuck in the mud and pulled them back 
 half the time farther than they had gone. But what 
 fun it was ! In after years a steam whistle woke 
 the echoes of these quiet waters. It was the first 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 401 
 
 one, and the last. The raih-oad, indeed, came to 
 town, long after I had grown to be a man, and a 
 cotton-mill interjected its bustle into the drowsy 
 hum of the waterwheels that had monopolized the 
 industry of the town before, disturbing its harmony 
 for a season. But the steamboat had no successors. 
 
 "The 'gossip benches' are filled." 
 
 The river that had once borne large ships gradually 
 sanded up at the mouth, and nothing heavier than 
 a one-masted lighter has come up, in the memory 
 of man, to the quay where grass grows high 
 among the cobblestones and the lone customs 
 official smokes his pipe all day long in unbroken 
 peace. The steamer was a launch of the smallest. 
 
402 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 It had been brought across country on a wagon. 
 Some one had bought it at an auction for a lark ; 
 and a huge lark was its year on tlie waters of the 
 Nibs River. The whole town took a sail in it by 
 turns, always with one aft whose business it was to 
 disentangle the rudder from the mass of seaweed 
 which with brief intervals suspended progress, and 
 all hands ready to get out and lift the steamer off 
 when it ran on a bank. 
 
 There came a clay when a more than commonly 
 ambitious excursion was undertaken, even to the 
 islands in the sea, some six or seven miles from the 
 town. The town council set out upon the journey, 
 with the rector of the Latin School and the burgo- 
 master, bargaining for dinner on their return at 
 dusk. But it was destined that those islands should 
 remain undiscovered by steam and the dinner un- 
 eaten. Barely outside, the tide left it high and dry 
 upon the sands. It was then those Danes showed 
 what stuff there was in them. The water would 
 not be back to lift them off for six hours and more. 
 They indulged in no lamentations, but sturdily pro- 
 duced the schnapps and sandwiches without which 
 no Dane is easily to be tempted out of sight of his 
 home : the rector evolved a pack of cards from the 
 depths of his coat pocket, and upon the sandbank 
 the party camped, playing a cheerful game of whist 
 until the tide came back and bore them home. 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 403 
 
 The night comes on. The people are returning 
 from their evening constitutional, walking in the 
 middle of the street and taking off their hats to 
 their neighbors as they pass. It is their custom, 
 and the American habit of nodding to friends is 
 held to be evidence of backwoods' manners excus- 
 able only in a people so new. In the deep recesses 
 of the Domkirke dark shadows are gathering. The 
 tower clock peals forth. At the last stroke the 
 watchman lifts up his chant in a voice that comes 
 quavering down from bygone ages : — 
 
 M Andanle. 
 
 Is 
 
 m 
 
 E 
 
 X 
 
 * 
 
 X 
 
 Ho, watchman ! heard ye the clock strike ten? 
 
 This 
 
 ^#=3= 
 
 =i= 
 
 i=i=di 
 
 hour is worth the know - ing Ye house-holds high and 
 
 i 
 
 5#=3= 
 
 t 
 
 W 
 
 --^ 
 
 m 
 
 low, The time is here and go - ing When ye to bed should 
 rit 
 
 =4= 
 
 
 go ; Ask God to guard, and say A - men 1 Be 
 rit 
 
 '=\- 
 
 ^- 
 
 :t 
 
 ^= 
 
 ? 
 
 I 
 
 quick and bright, Watch fire and light,Our clock just now struck ten. 
 
404 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 I shall take his advice. But first I must go to 
 the shoe-store to get a box of polish for my russet 
 shoes. Unexpectedly I found it for sale there. I 
 strike the storekeeper in an ungracious mood. He 
 objects to being bothered about business just when 
 he is shutting up shop. 
 
 " There," he says, handing me the desired box. 
 " Only one more left; I shall presently have to send 
 for more. Twice already have I been put to that 
 trouble. I don't know what has come over the 
 town." And he slams down the shutter with a fret- 
 ful jerk. I grope my way home in Egyptian dark- 
 ness, thanking in my heart the town council for its 
 forethought in painting the lamp-posts white. It 
 was when a dispute sprang up about the price of 
 gas, or something. Danish disputes are like the 
 law the world over, slow of gait ; and it was in no 
 spirit of mockery that a resolution was passed to 
 paint the lamp-posts white, pending the controversy, 
 so that the good people in the town might avoid 
 running against them in the dark and getting hurt, 
 if by any mischance they strayed from the middle 
 of the road. 
 
 Bright and early the next morning I found 
 women at work sprinkling white sand in the street 
 in front of my door, and strewing it with winter- 
 green and twigs of hemlock. Some one was dead, 
 and the funeral was to pass that way. Indeed they 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 405 
 
 all did. The cemetery was at the other end of the 
 street. It was one of the inducements held out to 
 my mother she told me, when father died, to move 
 from the old home into that street. Now that she 
 was quite alone, it was so " nice and lively ; all the 
 funerals passed by." The one buried that day I 
 had known, or she had 
 known me in my boyhood, 
 and it was expected that I 
 would attend. My mother 
 sent the wreath that be- 
 longs, — there is both sense 
 and sentiment in flowers 
 at a funeral when they are 
 wreathed by the hands of 
 those who loved the dead, 
 as is still the custom here ; 
 none where they are bought 
 at a florist's and paid for 
 with a growl, — and we 
 stood around the cofitin and 
 sang the old hymns, then walked behind it, two by 
 two, men and women, to the grave, singing as we 
 passed through the gate. 
 
 " Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." 
 The clods rang upon the cofifin with almost cheer- 
 ful sound, for she whose mortal body lay within was 
 full of years and very tired. The minister paused. 
 
 The Extinct Chimney-sweep. 
 
406 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 From among the mourners came forth the nearest 
 relative and stood by the grave, hat in hand. Ours 
 were all off. " From my heart I thank you, neigh- 
 bors all," he said, and it was over. We waited to 
 shake hands, to speculate on the weather, safe topic 
 even at funerals ; then went each to his own. 
 
 I went down by the cloister walk and sat upon 
 a bench and thought of it all. The stork had built 
 its nest there on the stump of a broken tree, and 
 was hatching its young. The big bird stood on 
 one leg and looked down upon me out of its grave, 
 unblinking eye as it did forty years ago when we 
 children sang to it in the street the song about the 
 Pyramids and Pharaoh's land. The town lay 
 slumbering in the sunlight and the blossoming 
 elders. The far tinkle of a bell came sleepily 
 over the hedges. Once upon a time it called the 
 monks to prayers. Ashes to ashes ! They are 
 gone and buried with the dead past. To-day it 
 summons the Latin School boys to recitations. 
 I shuddered at the thought. They had at the 
 school, when the bell called me with the rest, a 
 wretched tradition that some king had once ex- 
 pressed wonder at the many learned men who came 
 from the Latin School. And the rector told him 
 why. 
 
 " We have near here," he said, " a little birch 
 forest. It helps, your Majesty, it helps." Faith- 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 407 
 
 fully did it play its part in my day, though I cannot 
 bear witness that it helped. But its day passed, too, 
 and is gone. The 
 world moves and all 
 the while forward. 
 Not always with the 
 speed of the wind; 
 but it moves. The 
 letter-carrier on his 
 collecting rounds 
 with his cart has 
 stopped at the bleach- 
 ing yard where his 
 wife and little boy are 
 hanging out wash- 
 ing. He lights his 
 
 pipe and, after a The Ancient Bellwoman. 
 
 brief rest to take breath, turns to helping the gude- 
 wife hang the things on the line. Then he packs the 
 dry clothes in his cart, puts the boy in with them 
 and, puffing leisurely at his pipe, lounges soberly 
 homeward. There is no hurry with the mail. 
 
 There is not. It was only yesterday that, cross- 
 ing the meadows on a " local," I found the train 
 pulling up some distance from the village to let an 
 old woman, coming puffing and blowing from a 
 farm-house with a basket on her arm, catch up. 
 
 "Well, mother, can she hurry a bit.?" spake the 
 
408 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 conductor when she came within hearing. They 
 address one another in the third person out of a 
 sort of neighborly regard, it appears. 
 
 " Now, sonny," responded the old woman, as she 
 lumbered on board, " don't I run as fast as I can ? " 
 
 " And has she got her fare, now ? " queried the 
 conductor. 
 
 " Why, no, sonny ; how should I have that till I've 
 been in to sell my eggs .? " and she held up the bas- 
 ket in token of good faith. 
 
 " Well, well," growled the other, " see to it that 
 she doesn't forget to pay it when she comes back." 
 And the train went on. 
 
 Time to wait ! The deckhand on the ferry-boat 
 lifts his hat and bids you God speed, as you pass. 
 The train waits for the conductor to hear the station- 
 master's account of that last baby and his assurance 
 that the mother is doing well. The laborer goes 
 on strike when his right is questioned to stop work 
 to take his glass of beer between meals ; the tele- 
 graph messenger, meeting the man for whom he has 
 a message, goes back home with him " to hear the 
 news." It would not be proper to break it in the 
 street. I remember once coming down the chain 
 of lakes in the Jutland peninsula on a steamer that 
 stopped at an out-of-the-way landing where no pas- 
 sengers were in waiting. One, a woman, was made 
 out, though, hastening down a path that lost itself 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 409 
 
 in the woods a long way off. The captain waited. 
 As she stepped aboard another woman appeared in 
 the dim distance, running, too. He blew his whistle 
 to tell her he was waiting, but said nothing. When 
 she was quite near the steamer, a third woman turned 
 into the path, bound, too, for the landing. I looked 
 on in some fear lest the steamboat man should lose 
 his temper at length. But not he. It was only 
 when a fourth and last woman appeared like a 
 whirling speck in the distance, with the three aboard 
 making frantic signals to her 
 to hurry, that he showed signs 
 of impatience. " Couldn't 
 she," he said, with some 
 asperity, as she flounced 
 aboard, " couldn't she get 
 here sooner? " 
 
 " No," she said, " I couldn't. 
 
 Didn't 
 
 you see me run i 
 
 The Village ExjM-ess. 
 
 And he rang the bell to start 
 the boat. 
 
 Time to wait ! In New 
 York I have seen men, in 
 the days before the iron 
 gates were put on the ferry-boats, jump when the 
 boat was yet a yard from the landing and run as if 
 their lives depended on it ; then, meeting an ac- 
 quaintance in the street, stop and chat ten minutes 
 
4IO THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 with him about nothing. How much farther did 
 they get than these ? When all Denmark was torn 
 up last summer by a strike that involved three- 
 fourths of the working population and extended 
 through many months, to the complete blocking 
 of all industries, not a blow was struck or an ill 
 word spoken during all the time, determined as 
 both sides were. No troops or extra police were 
 needed. The strikers used the time to attend uni- 
 versity extension lectures, visit museums and learn 
 something useful. The people, including many of 
 the employers, contributed liberally to keep them 
 from starving. It was a war of principles, and it 
 was fought out on that line, though in the end 
 each gave in to something. Yes, it is good, some- 
 times, to take time to think, even if you cannot wait 
 for the tide to float you off a sandbank. Though 
 what else they could have done, I cannot imagine. 
 That night there was a great to-do in the old 
 town. The target company had its annual shoot, 
 and the target company included all of the solid 
 citizens of the town. The " king," who had made 
 the best score, was escorted with a band to the 
 hotel on the square opposite the Dom, and made 
 a speech from a window, adorned with the green 
 sash of his office, and flanked by ten tallow-dips 
 by way of illumination. And the people cheered. 
 Yes ! it was petty and provincial and all that. But 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 411 
 
 it was pleasant and neighborly, and oh ! how good 
 for a tired man. 
 
 When I was rested, I journeyed through the 
 islands to find old friends, and found them. The 
 heartiness of the welcome that met me everywhere! 
 No need of their telling me they were glad to see 
 me. It shone out of their faces and all over them. 
 I shall always remember that journey : the people 
 in the cars that were forever lunching and urging 
 me to join in, though we had never met before. 
 Were we not fellow-travellers ? How, then, could 
 we be strangers ? And when they learned I was 
 from New York, the inquiries after Hans or Fritz, 
 somewhere in Nebraska or Dakota. Had I ever 
 met them ? and, if I did, would I tell them I had 
 seen father, mother, or brother, and that they were 
 well ? And would I come and stay with them a 
 day or two ? It was with very genuine regret that 
 I had mostly to refuse. My vacation could not last 
 forever. As it was, I packed it full enough to last 
 me for many summers. Of all sorts of things, too. 
 Shall I ever forget that ride on the stage up the 
 shore-road from Elsinore, which I made outside 
 with the driver, a slow-going farmer who had con- 
 scientious scruples, so it seemed, against passing 
 any vehicle on the road and preferred to take the 
 dust of them all, until we looked like a pair of 
 dusty millers up there on the box. To my protests 
 
412 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 he turned an incredulous ear, remarking only that 
 there was always some one ahead, which was a fact. 
 When at last we drew near our destination he found 
 himself a passenger short. After some puzzled in- 
 quiry of the rest he came back and, mounting to 
 his seat beside me, said quietly: "One of them fell 
 out on his head, they say, down the road. I had 
 him to deliver at the inn, but it can't be blamed on 
 me, can it ? " 
 
 He was not the only philosopher in that com- 
 pany. Inside rode two passengers, one apparently 
 an official, sheriff, or something, the other a doctor, 
 who debated all the way the propriety of uniforming 
 the physician in attendance upon executions. The 
 sheriff evidently considered such a step an invasion 
 of his official privilege. "Why," cried the doctor, 
 "it is almost impossible now to tell the difference 
 between the doctor and the delinquent." " Ah, 
 well," sighed the other, placidly settling back in his 
 seat. "Just let them once take the wrong man, 
 then we shall see." 
 
 Through forest and field, over hill and vale, by 
 the still waters where far islands lay shimmering 
 upon the summer sea like floating fairy-lands, into 
 the deep, gloomy moor went my way. The moor 
 was ever most to my liking. I was born on the 
 edge of it, and once its majesty has sunk into a 
 human soul, that soul is forever after attuned to it 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 413 
 
 How little we have the making of ourselves. And 
 how much greater the need that we should make 
 of that little the most. All my days I have been 
 preaching against heredity as the arch-enemy of hope 
 and effort, and here is mine, holding me fast. When 
 I see, rising out of the dark moor, the lonely cairn 
 that sheltered the bones of my fathers before the 
 White Christ preached peace to their land, a great 
 yearning comes over me. There I want to lay 
 mine. There I want to sleep, under the heather 
 where the bees hum drowsily in the purple broom 
 at noonday and white shadows walk in the night. 
 Mist from the marshes they are, but the people 
 think them wraiths. Half heathen yet, am I ? Yes, 
 if to yearn for the soil whence you sprang is to be a 
 heathen, heathen am I, not half, but whole, and will 
 be all my days. 
 
 But not so. He is the heathen who loves not 
 his native land. Thor long since lost his grip on 
 the sons of the vikings. Over the battlefield he 
 drives his chariot yet, and his hammer strikes fire 
 as of old. The British remember it from Nelson's 
 raid on Copenhagen; the Germans felt it in 1849, 
 and again when in the fight for very life the little 
 country held its own a whole winter against two 
 great powers on rapine bent; felt it at Helgoland 
 where its sailors scattered their navies and drove 
 them from the sea, beaten. Yet never did the 
 
414 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 White Christ work greater transformation in a peo- 
 ple, once so fierce, now so gentle unless when fight- 
 ing for its firesides. Forest and field teem with 
 legends that tell of it ; tell of the battle between the 
 old and the new, and the victory of peace. Every 
 hilltop bears witness to it. 
 
 Holy Andrew's Cross. 
 
 Here by the wayside stands a wooden cross. All 
 the country-side knows the story of " Holy An- 
 drew," the priest whose piety wrought miracles far 
 and near. Once upon a time, runs the legend, he 
 went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was 
 left behind by his companions because he would 
 not sail, be wind and tide ever so fair, without first 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 415 
 
 going to mass to pray for a safe journey. When, 
 his devotions ended, he went to the dock, he saw 
 only the sail of the departing craft sinking below 
 the horizon. Overcome by grief and loneHness, he 
 stood watching it, thinking of friends at home whom 
 he might never again see, when a horseman reined 
 in his steed and bade him mount with him ; he 
 would see him on his way. Andrew did, and fell 
 asleep in the stranger's arms. When he awoke he 
 lay on this hill, where the cross has stood ever 
 since, heard the cattle low and saw the spire of his 
 church in the village where the vesper bells were 
 ringing. Many months went by before his fellow- 
 pilgrims reached home. Holy Andrew lived six 
 hundred years ago. A masterful man was he, be- 
 side a holy one, who bluntly told the king the truth 
 when he needed it, and knew how to ward, the faith 
 and the church committed to his keeping. By such 
 were the old rovers weaned from their wild life. 
 What a mark he left upon his day is shown yet 
 by the tradition that disaster impends if the cross 
 is allowed to fall into decay. Once when it was 
 neglected, the cattle-plague broke out in the parish 
 and ceased, says the story, not until it was restored, 
 when right away there was an end. 
 
 Holy Andrew's church still stands over yonder. 
 Not that one with the twin towers. That has 
 another story to tell, one that was believed to be 
 
4l6 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 half or wholly legend, too, until a recent restoration 
 of it brought to light under the whitewash of the 
 reformation mural paintings which furnished the 
 lacking proof that it was all true. It was in 
 the days of Holy Andrew that the pious knight, 
 Sir Asker Ryg, going to the war, told the lady 
 Inge to build a new church. The folk-song tells 
 what was the matter with the old one " with wall 
 of clay, straw-thatched and grim " : — : 
 
 The wall it was mouldy and foul and green, 
 And rent with a crack full deep ; 
 Time gnaweth ever with sharper tooth, 
 Leaves little to mend, I ween. 
 
 Nothing was left to mend in the church of 
 Fjenneslev, so she must build a new. " It is not 
 fitting," says the knight in the song, "to pray to 
 God in such a broken wrack. The wind blows in 
 and the rain drips " : — 
 
 Christ has gone to His heavenly home ; 
 No more a manger beseems Him. 
 
 " And," he whispers to her at the leave-taking, 
 " an' thou bearest to our house a boy, build a 
 tower upon the church ; if a daughter come, build 
 but a spire. A man must fight his way, but 
 humility becomes a woman." 
 
 Then the fight, and the return with victory ; the 
 impatient ride that left all the rest behind as they 
 
WHEN I WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 417 
 
 neared home, the unspoken prayer of the knight 
 as he bent his head over the saddle-bow, riding up 
 the hill over the edge of which the church must 
 presently appear, that it might be a tower ; and his 
 " sly laugh " when it comes into view with two 
 towers for one. Well might he laugh. Those 
 twin brothers be- 
 came the makers 
 of Danish history 
 in its heroic age ; 
 the one a mighty 
 captain, the other 
 a great bishop. 
 King Valdemar's 
 friend and coun- 
 sellor, who fought 
 when there was 
 need "as well with 
 sword as with 
 book." Absalon 
 left the country 
 Christian to the 
 core. It was his clerk, Saxo, surnamed Grammaticus 
 because of his learning, who gave to the world the 
 collection of chronicles and traditionary lore to 
 which we owe our Hamlet. 
 
 The church stands there with its two towers. 
 They made haste to restore them when they read 
 
 Sir Asker Ryg's Church at Fjennesloevlille. 
 
41 8 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 in the long-hidden paintings the story of Sir 
 Asker's return and gratitude, just as tradition had 
 handed it down from the twelfth century. It is 
 not the first time the loyal faith of the people has 
 proved a better guide than carping critics, and 
 likely it will not be the last. 
 
 I rediscovered on that trip the ancient bellwoman, 
 sole advertising medium before the advent of the 
 printing-press, the extinct chimney-sweep, the orna- 
 mental policeman who for professional excitement 
 reads detective novels at home, and the sacrificial 
 rites of — of what or whom I shall leave unsaid. 
 But it must have been an unconscious survival of 
 something of the sort that prompted the butcher 
 to adorn with gay ribbons the poor nag led to the 
 slaughter in the wake of the town drummer. He 
 designed it as an advertisement that there would 
 be fresh hoi^se-meat for sale that day. The horse 
 took it as a compliment and walked in the proces- 
 sion with visible pride. And I found the church 
 in which no collection was ever taken. It was the 
 very Dom in my own old town. The velvet purses 
 that used to be poked into the pews on Sundays 
 on long sticks were missing, and I asked about 
 them. They had not used them in a long time, 
 said the beadle, and added, " It was a kind of 
 Catholic fashion anyway, and no good." The pews 
 had apparently suspected as much, and had held 
 
WHEN 1 WENT HOME TO MOTHER 
 
 419 
 
 "Horse-meat to-day! " 
 
 haughtily aloof from the purses. That may have 
 been another reason for their going. 
 
 The old town ever had its own ways. They 
 were mostly good ways, though sometimes odd. 
 Who but a Ribe citizen would have thought of 
 Knud Clausen's way of doing my wife honor on 
 the Sunday morning when, as a young girl, she 
 ■went to church to be confirmed ? Her father and 
 Knud were neighbors and Knud's barn-yard was a 
 sore subject between them, being right under the 
 other's dining-room window. He sometimes pro- 
 tested and oftener offered to buy, but Knud would 
 neither listen nor sell. But he loved the ground 
 
420 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 his neighbor's pretty daughter walked upon, as did, 
 indeed, every poor man in the town, and on her 
 Sunday he showed it by strewing the offensive pile 
 with fresh cut grass and leaves, and sticking it 
 full of flowers. It was well meant, and it was 
 Danish all over. Stick up for your rights at any 
 cost. These secure, go any length to oblige a 
 neighbor. 
 
 Journeying so, I came from the home of dead 
 kings at last to that of the living, — old King 
 Christian, beloved of his people, — where once my 
 children horrified the keeper of Rosenborg Palace 
 by playing " the Wild Man of Borneo " with the 
 official silver lions in the great knights' hall. And 
 I saw the old town no more. But in my dreams 
 I walk its peaceful streets, listen to the whisper of 
 the reeds in the dry moats about the green castle 
 hill, and hear my mother call me once more her 
 boy. And I know that I shall find them, with 
 my lost childhood, when we all reach home at 
 last. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE AMERICAN MADE 
 
 Long ago, when 
 I found my work 
 beginning to mas- 
 ter me, I put up a 
 nest of fifty pigeon- 
 holes in my office 
 so that with sys- 
 tem I might get 
 the upper hand of 
 it ; only to find, as 
 the years passed, 
 that I had got fifty 
 tyrants for one. 
 The other day I 
 had to call in a 
 Hessian to help me 
 tame the pigeon- 
 holes. He was a serious library person, and he 
 could not quite make out what it meant when 
 among such heads as " Slum Tenements," " The 
 
 421 
 
 The Cross of Dannebrog. 
 
422 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 Bend," and " Rum's Curse," he came upon this one 
 over one of the pigeonholes : — - 
 
 Him all that goodly company 
 
 Did as deliverer hail. 
 They tied a ribbon round his neck, 
 
 Another round his tail. 
 
 With all his learning, his education was not fin- 
 ished, for he had missed the " delectable ballad of 
 the Waller lot " and Eugene Field's account of the 
 dignities that were " heaped upon Clow's noble yel- 
 low pup," else he would have understood. The 
 pigeonhole contained most of the " honors " that 
 have come to me of late years, — the nominations to 
 membership in societies, guilds, and committees, in 
 conventions at home and abroad, — most of them 
 declined, as I declined Governor Roosevelt's re- 
 quest that I should serve on the last Tenement- 
 House Commission, for the reason which I have 
 given heretofore, that to represent is not my busi- 
 ness. To write is ; I can do it much better and 
 back up the other; so we are two for one. Not 
 that I would be understood as being insensible of 
 the real honor intended to be conferred by such 
 tokens. I do not hold them lightly. I value the 
 good opinion of my fellow-men, for with it comes 
 increased power to do things. But I would reserve 
 the honors for those who have fairly earned them, 
 and on whom they sit easy. They don't on me. I 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 423 
 
 am not ornamental by nature. Now that I have 
 told all there is to tell, the reader is at liberty to 
 agree with my Httle boy concerning the upshot of it. 
 He was having a heart-to-heart talk with his mother 
 the other day, in the course of which she told him 
 that we must be patient ; no one in the world was 
 all good except God. 
 
 " And you," said he, admiringly. He is his father's 
 son. 
 
 She demurred, but he stoutly maintained his own. 
 
 " I'll bet you," he said, '' if you were to ask lots of 
 people around here they would say you were fine. 
 But" — he struggled reflectively with a button — 
 " Gee ! I can't understand why they make such a 
 fuss about papa." 
 
 Out of the mouth of babes, etc. The boy is right. 
 I cannot either, and it makes me feel small. I did 
 my work and tried to put into it what I thought 
 citizenship ought to be, when I made it out. I wish 
 I had made it out earlier for my own peace of mind. 
 And that is all there is to it. 
 
 For hating the slum what credit belongs to me ? 
 Who could love it ? When it comes to that, per- 
 haps it was the open, the woods, the freedom of my 
 Danish fields I loved, the contrast that was hateful. 
 I hate darkness and dirt anywhere, and naturally 
 want to let in the light. I will have no dark cor- 
 ners in my own cellar; it must be whitewashed 
 
424 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 clean. Nature, I think, intended me for a cobbler, 
 or a patch-tailor. I love to mend and make crooked 
 things straight. When I was a carpenter I preferred 
 to make an old house over to building a new. Just 
 now I am trying to help a young couple set up in 
 the laundry business. It is along the same line; 
 that is the reason I picked it out for them. If any of 
 my readers know of a good place for them to start 
 I wish they would tell me of it. They are just two 
 — young people with the world before them. My 
 office years ago became notorious as a sort of misfit 
 shop where things were matched that had got mis- 
 laid in the hurry and bustle of life, in which some 
 of us always get shoved aside. Some one has got 
 to do that, and I like the job ; which is fortunate, 
 for I have no head for creative work of any kind. 
 The publishers bother me to write a novel ; editors 
 want me on their staffs. I shall do neither, for the 
 good reason that I am neither poet, philosopher, nor, 
 I was going to say, philanthropist ; but leave me that. 
 I would love my fellow-man. For the rest I am a 
 reporter of facts. And that I would remain. So, I 
 know what I can do and how to do it best. 
 
 We all love power — to be on the winning side. 
 You cannot help being there when you are fighting 
 the slum, for it is the cause of justice and right. How 
 then can you lose ? And what matters it how you 
 fare, your cause is bound to win. I said it before. 
 
After Twenty-five Years. 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 425 
 
 but it will bear to be said again, not once but many 
 times : every defeat in such a fight is a step toward 
 victory, taken in the right spirit. In the end you will 
 come out ahead. The power of the biggest boss is 
 like chaff in your hands. You can see his finish. 
 And he knows it. Hence, even he will treat you 
 with respect. However he try to bluff you, he is 
 the one who is afraid. The ink was not dry upon 
 Bishop Potter's arraignment of Tammany bestial- 
 ity before Richard Croker was offering to sacrifice 
 his most faithful henchmen as the price of peace ; 
 and he would have done it had the Bishop but 
 crooked his little finger in the direction of any one 
 of them. The boss has the courage of the brute, 
 or he would not be boss ; but when it comes to a 
 moral issue he is the biggest coward in the lot. 
 The bigger the brute the more abject its terror at 
 what it does not understand. 
 
 Some of the honors I refused ; there were some 
 my heart craved, and I could not let them go. 
 There hangs on my wall the passport Governor 
 Roosevelt gave me when I went abroad, dearer to 
 me than sheepskin or degree, for the heart of a 
 friend is in it. What would I not give to be 
 worthy of its faithful affection ! Sometimes when I 
 go abroad I wear upon my breast a golden cross 
 which King Christian gave me. It is the old Cru- 
 saders' cross, in the sign of which my stern fore- 
 
426 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 fathers conquered the heathen and themselves on 
 many a hard-fought field. My father wore it for 
 long and faithful service to the State. I rendered 
 none. I can think of but one chance I had to 
 strike a blow for the old flag. That was when in a 
 typhus epidemic I found the health officers using it 
 as a fever flag to warn boats away from the emer- 
 gency hospital pier at East Sixteenth Street. They 
 had no idea of what flag it was: they just hap- 
 pened to have it on hand. But they found out 
 quickly. I gave them half an hour in which to find 
 another. The hospital was full of very sick patients, 
 or I should have made them fire a salute to old 
 Dannebrog by way of reparation. As it was, I 
 think they had visions of ironclads in the East 
 River. They had one of a very angry reporter, 
 anyhow. But though I did nothing to deserve it, 
 I wear the cross proudly for the love I bear the 
 flag under which I was born and the good old 
 King who gave it to me. I saw him often when I 
 was a young lad. In that which makes the man he 
 had not changed when last I met him in Copenha- 
 gen. They told there how beggars used to waylay 
 him on his daily walks until the police threatened 
 them with arrest. Then they stood at a distance 
 making sorrowful gestures ; and the King, who 
 understood, laid a silver coin upon the palace win- 
 dow shelf and went his way. The King must obey 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 427 
 
 the law, but he can forget the principles of alms- 
 giving, as may the rest of us at Christmas, and be 
 blameless. 
 
 Of that last meeting with King Christian I 
 mean to let my American fellow-citizens know 
 so that they may understand what manner of man 
 is he whom they call in Europe its " first gentle- 
 man " and in Denmark " the good King." But 
 first I shall have to tell how my father came to 
 wear the cross of Dannebrog. He was very old 
 at the time ; retired long since from his post which 
 he had filled faithfully forty years and more. In 
 some way, I never knew quite how, they passed 
 him by with the cross at the time of the retirement. 
 Perhaps he had given offence by refusing a title. 
 He was an independent old man, and cared noth- 
 ing for such things ; but I knew that the cross he 
 would gladly have worn for the King he had served 
 so well. And when he sat in the shadow, with the 
 darkness closing in, I planned to get it for him as 
 the one thing I knew would give him pleasure. 
 
 But the official red tape was stronger than I ; 
 until one day, roused to anger by it all, I wrote 
 direct to the King and told him about it. I 
 showed him the wrong that had been done, and 
 told him that I was sure he would set it right as 
 soon as he knew of it. And I was not mistaken. 
 The old town was put into a great state of excite- 
 
428 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ment and mystification when one day there arrived 
 in a large official envelope, straight from the King, 
 the cross long since given up ; for, indeed, the 
 Minister had told me that, my father having been 
 retired, the case was closed. The injustice that 
 had been done was itself a bar to its being undone ; 
 there was no precedent for such action. That was 
 what I told the King, and also that it was his busi- 
 ness to set precedents, and he did. Four years later, 
 
 when I took my chil- 
 dren home to let my 
 father bless them, — 
 they were his only 
 grandchildren and 
 he had never seen 
 any of them, — he sat 
 in his easy chair and 
 wondered yet at the 
 queer way in which 
 that cross came. 
 And I marvelled 
 with him. He died 
 without knowing 
 how I had interfered. 
 
 King Christian as I saw him last. It waS better SO. 
 
 It was when I went home to mother that I met 
 King Christian last. They had told me the right 
 way to approach the King, the proper number of 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 429 
 
 bows and all that, and I meant to faithfully observe 
 it all. I saw a tired and lonely old man, to whom 
 my heart went out on the instant, and I went right 
 up and shook hands, and told him how much I 
 thought of him and how sorry I was for his losing 
 his wife, the Queen Louise, whom everybody 
 loved. He looked surprised a moment ; then such 
 a friendly look came into his face, and I thought 
 him the handsomest King that ever was. He 
 asked about the Danes in America, and I told 
 him they were good citizens, better for not forget- 
 ting their motherland and him in his age and loss. 
 He patted my hand with a glad little laugh, and 
 bade me tell them how much he appreciated it, 
 and how kindly his thoughts were of them all. 
 As I made to go, after a long talk, he stopped me 
 and, touching the little silver cross on my coat 
 lapel, asked what it was. 
 
 I told him ; told him of the motto, " In His 
 Name," and of the labor of devoted women in our 
 great country to make it mean what it said. As I 
 spoke I remembered my father, and I took it off 
 and gave it to him, bidding him keep it, for surely 
 few men could wear it so worthily. But he put 
 it back into my hand, thanking me with a faithful 
 grasp of his own ; he could not take it from me, he 
 said. And so we parted. I thought with a pang 
 of remorse, as I stood in the doorway, of the part- 
 
430 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 ing bow I had forgotten, and turned around to 
 make good the omission. There stood the King 
 in his blue uniform, nodding so mildly to me, with 
 a smile so full of kindness, that. I — why, I just 
 nodded back and waved my hand. It was very 
 improper, I dare say; perfectly shocking; but 
 never was heartier greeting to king. I meant 
 every bit of it. 
 
 The next year he sent me his cross of gold for 
 the one of silver I offered him. I wear it gladly, for 
 the knighthood it confers pledges to the defence 
 of womanhood and of little children, and if I cannot 
 wield lance and sword as the king's men of old, I 
 can wield the pen. It may be that in the provi- 
 dence of God the shedding of ink in the cause of right 
 shall set the world farther ahead in our day than 
 the blood-letting of all the ages past. 
 
 These I could not forego. Neither, when friends 
 gathered in the King's Daughters' Settlement on 
 our silver wedding day, and with loving words gave 
 to the new house my name, could I say them nay. 
 It stands, that house, within a stone's throw of many 
 a door in which I sat friendless and forlorn, trying 
 to hide from the policeman who would not let me 
 sleep ; within hail of the Bend of the wicked past, 
 atoned for at last; of the Bowery boarding-house 
 where I lay senseless on the stairs after my first 
 day's work in the newspaper ofiHce, starved well- 
 
The Jacob A. Riis House. 
 No. 50 Henry Street, New York. 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 431 
 
 nigh to death. But the memory of the old days 
 has no sting. Its message is one of hope; the 
 house itself is the key-note. It is the pledge of a 
 better day, of the defeat of the slum with its help- 
 less heredity of despair. That shall damn no longer 
 lives yet unborn. Children of God are we ! that is 
 our challenge to the slum, and on earth we shall 
 claim yet our heritage of light. 
 
 Of horne and neighborliness restored it is the 
 pledge. The want of them makes the great gap in 
 the city life that is to be our modern civic life. 
 With the home preserved we may look forward 
 without fear ; there is no question that can be asked 
 of the Republic to which we shall not find the 
 answer. We may not always agree as to what is 
 right; but, starting there, we shall be seeking the 
 right, and seeking we shall find it. Ruin and dis- 
 aster are at the end of the road that starts from 
 the slum. 
 
 Perhaps it is easy for me to preach contentment. 
 With a mother who prays, a wife who fills the 
 house with song, and the laughter of happy chil- 
 dren about me, all my dreams come true or coming 
 true, why should I not be content ? In fact, I know 
 of no better equipment for making them come true : 
 faith in God to make all things possible that are 
 right; faith in man to get them done; fun enough 
 in between to keep them from spoiling or running 
 
432 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 off the track into useless crankery. An extra good 
 sprinkling of that ! The longer T live the more I 
 think of humor as in truth the saving sense. A 
 civil-service examination to hit home might well be 
 one to make sure the man could appreciate a good 
 story. For all editors I would have that kind made 
 compulsory. Here is one chiding me in his paper, 
 — oh ! a serious paper that calls upon parents to 
 " insist that children's play shall be play and not 
 loafing " and not be allowed to obscure " their more 
 serious responsibilities," — chiding me for encour- 
 aging truancy ! " We are quite sure," he writes, 
 " that no really well-brought up and well-disposed 
 boy ever thinks of such a thing." Perish the 
 thought ! And yet, if he should take the notion, — 
 you never can tell with the devil so busy all the 
 time, — there's the barrel they kept us in at school 
 when we were bad ; I told of it before. Putting 
 the lid on was a sure preventive ; with our little 
 short legs we couldn't climb out. Don't think I 
 recommend it. It just comes to me, the way things 
 will. It was held to be a powerful means of bring- 
 ing children up " well disposed " in those days. 
 
 Looking back over thirty years it seems to me 
 that never had man better a time than I. Enough 
 of the editor chaps there were always to keep up 
 the spirits. The hardships people write to me 
 about were not worth while mentioning; and any- 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 
 
 433 
 
 way they had to be, to get some of the crankery out 
 of me, I guess. But the friendships endure. For 
 all the rebuffs of my life they have more than made 
 up. When I think of them, of the good men and 
 women who have called me friend, I am filled with 
 
 Christmas Eve with the King's Daughters. 
 
 wonder and gratitude. I know the editor of the 
 heavy responsibilities would not have approved of 
 all of them. Even the police might not have done it. 
 But, then, police approval is not a certificate of char- 
 acter to one who has lived the best part of his life 
 in Mulberry Street. They drove Harry Hill out 
 
434 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 of the business after milking him dry. Harry Hill 
 kept a dive, but he was a square man; his word 
 was as good as his bond. He was hardly a model 
 citizen, but in a hard winter he kept half the ward 
 from starving ; his latch-string hung out always to 
 those in need. Harry was no particular friend of 
 mine ; I mention him as a type of some to whom 
 objection might be made. 
 
 But then the police would certainly disapprove of 
 Dr. Parkhurst, whom I am glad to call by the name 
 of friend. They might even object to Bishop Pot- 
 ter, whose friendship I return with a warmth that 
 is nowise dampened by his disapproval of reporters 
 as a class. There is where the Bishop is mistaken ; 
 we are none of us infallible, and what a good thing 
 it is that we are not. Think of having an infallible 
 friend to live alongside of always ! How long could 
 you stand it ? We were not infallible, James Tan- 
 ner ! — called Corporal by the world, Jim by us — 
 when we sat together in the front seats of the Old 
 Eighteenth Street Church under Brother Sim- 
 mons's teaching. Far from it ; but we were willing 
 to learn the ways of grace, and that was something. 
 Had he only stayed ! Your wife mothered my 
 Elisabeth when she was homesick in a strange land. 
 I have never forgotten it. And you could pass 
 civil service, Jim, on the story I spoke of. I would 
 be willing to let the rest go, if you will promise to 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 
 
 435 
 
 forget about that bottle of champagne. It was 
 your doings, anyhow, you know. 
 
 Amos Ensign, I did not give you the credit you 
 should have had for our 
 success in Mulberry 
 Street in the early days, 
 but I give it to you 
 now. You were loyal 
 and good, and you 
 have stayed a reporter, 
 a living denial of the 
 charge that our pro- 
 fession is not as good 
 as the best. Dr. Jane 
 Elizabeth Robbins, you 
 
 told me, when I was James Tanner. 
 
 hesitating over the first chapters of these reminis- 
 cences, to take the short cut and put it all in, and I 
 did, because you are as wise as you are good. I have 
 told it all, and now, manlike, I will serve you as 
 your sex has been served from the dawn of time: 
 the woman did it ! yours be the blame. Anthony 
 Ronne, dear old chum in the days of adversity ; 
 Max Fischel, trusty friend of the years in Mulberry 
 Street, who never said " can't " once — you always 
 knew a way ; Brother W. W. J. Warren, faithful in 
 good and in evil report; General C. T. Christen- 
 sen, whose compassion passeth understanding, for. 
 
436 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 though a banker, you bore with and befriended me, 
 who cannot count ; Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, my 
 civic conscience ever ; John H. Mulchahey, without 
 whose wise counsels in the days of good govern- 
 ment and reform the battle with the slum would 
 surely have gone against us ; Jane Addams and 
 Mrs. Emmons Blaine, leaven that shall yet leaven 
 the whole unsightly lump out yonder by the west- 
 ern lake and let in the light ; A. S. Solomons, Silas 
 McBee, Mrs. Roland C. Lincoln, Lilian D. Wald, 
 Felix Adler, Endicott Peabody, Lyman Abbott, 
 Louise Seymour Houghton, Jacob H. Schiff, John 
 Finley, — Jew and Gentile who taught me why in 
 this world personal conduct and personal character 
 count ever for most, — my love to you all ! It is 
 time I am off and away. William McCloy, the 
 next time I step into your canoe and upset it, and 
 you turn that smiling countenance upon me, up to 
 your neck in the lake, I will surely drown you. 
 You are too good for this world. J. Evarts Tracy, 
 host of my happy days on restful Wahwaskesh ! 
 I know of a certain hole in under a shelving rock 
 upon which the partridge is wont to hatch her 
 young, where lies a bigger bass than ever you tired 
 out according to the rules of your beloved sport, 
 and I will have him if I have to charm him with 
 honeyed words and a bean-pole. And Ainslie shall 
 cook him to a turn. Make 'haste then to the feast ! 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 
 
 437 
 
 Ahead there is light. Even as I write the little 
 ones from Cherry Street are playing on the grass 
 under my trees. The time is at hand when we 
 shall bring to them in their slum the things which 
 we must now bring them to see, and then the slum 
 
 "The little ones from Cherry Street." 
 
 will be no more. How little we grasp the mean- 
 ing of it all. In a report of the Commissioner of 
 Education I read the other day that of kindergar- 
 ten children in an Eastern city who were questioned 
 63 per cent did not know a robin, and more than 
 half had not seen a dandelion in its yellow glory. 
 
438 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 And yet we complain that our cities are misgov- 
 erned ! You who think that the teaching of " civ- 
 ics " in the school covers it all, I am not speaking 
 to you. You will never understand. But the rest 
 of you who are willing to sit with me at the feet of 
 little Molly and learn from her, listen : She was 
 poor and ragged and starved. Her home was a 
 hovel. We were debating, some good women who 
 knew her and I, how best to make a merry Christ- 
 mas for her, and my material mind hung upon 
 clothes and boots and rubbers, for it was in Chi- 
 cago. But the vision of her soul was a pair of red 
 shoes ! Her heart craved them ; aye, brethren, and 
 she got them. Not for all the gold in the Treasury 
 would I have trodden it under in pork and beans, 
 smothered it in — no, not in rubber boots, though 
 the mud in the city by the lake be both deep and 
 black. They were the window, those red shoes, 
 through which her little captive soul looked out 
 and yearned for the beauty of God's great world. 
 Could I forget the blue boots with the tassels which 
 I worshipped in my boyhood.? Nay, friends, the 
 robin and the dandelion we must put back into 
 those barren lives if we would have good citizen- 
 ship. They and the citizenship are first cousins. 
 We robbed the children of them, or stood by and 
 saw it done, and it is for us to restore them. That 
 is my answer to the missionary who writes to ask 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 
 
 439 
 
 what is the " most practical way of making 
 good Christians and American citizens " out of 
 the emigrants who sit heavy on her conscience, 
 as well they may. Christianity without the robin 
 and the dandelion is never going to reach down into 
 the slum ; American citizenship without them would 
 leave the slum there, to dig the grave of it and of 
 the republic. 
 
 Light ahead! The very battle that is now 
 waged for righteousness on the once forgotten East 
 Side is our answer to the cry of the young who, 
 having seen the light, were willing no longer to live 
 in darkness. I know, for I was one of the com- 
 mittee which Dr. Felix Adler called together in 
 response to their appeal a year ago. The Com- 
 mittee of Fifteen succeeded to its work. " What 
 does it all help ? " the doubting Thomases have 
 asked a half-score years, watching the settlements 
 build their bridge of hearts between mansion and 
 tenement, and hundreds give devoted lives of toil 
 and sacrifice to make it strong and lasting; and 
 ever the answer came back, sturdily : " Wait and 
 see ! It will come." And now it has come. The 
 work is bearing fruit. On the East Side the young 
 rise in rebellion against the slum ; on the West 
 Side the League for Political Education runs a 
 ball-ground. Omen of good sense and of victory ! 
 So the country is safe. When we fight no longer 
 
440 
 
 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 for the poor, but with the poor, the slum is taken 
 in the rear and beaten already. 
 
 The world moves. The Bend is gone ; the 
 Barracks are gone ; Mulberry Street itself as I 
 
 My Silver Bride. 
 
 knew it so long is gone. Cat Alley, whence came 
 the deputation of ragamuffins to my office demand- 
 ing flowers for " the lady in the back," the poor old 
 scrubwoman who lay dead in her dark basement, 
 went when the Elm Street widening let light into 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 
 
 441 
 
 the heart of our block. The old days are gone. I 
 myself am gone. A year ago I had warning that 
 "the night cometh when no man can work," and 
 Mulberry Street knew me no more. I am still a 
 young man, not far 
 past fifty, and I have 
 much I would do 
 yet. But what if it 
 were ordered other- 
 wise ? I have been 
 very happy. No man 
 ever had so good a 
 time. Should I not 
 be content ? 
 
 I dreamed a beau- 
 tiful dream in my 
 youth, and I awoke 
 and found it true. 
 My silver bride they 
 called her just now. 
 The frost is upon 
 my head, indeed ; 
 hers winter has not ""« comes the Baby ! 
 
 touched with its softest breath. Her footfall is the 
 lightest, her laugh the merriest in the house. The 
 boys are all in love with their mother; the girls 
 tyrannize and worship her together. The cadet 
 corps elects her an honorary member, for no stouter 
 
442 THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN 
 
 champion of the flag is in the land. Sometimes 
 when she sings with the children I sit and listen, 
 and with her voice there comes to me as an echo of 
 the long past the words in her letter, that blessed 
 first letter in which she wrote down the text of all 
 my after-life: "We will strive together for all that 
 is noble and good." So she saw her duty as a true 
 American, and aye ! she has kept the pledge. 
 
 But here comes our daughter with little Virginia 
 to visit her grandpapa. Oh, the little vixen ! Then 
 where is his peace ? God bless the child ! 
 
 I have told the story of the making of an Ameri- 
 can. There remains to tell how I found out that 
 he was made and finished at last. It was when I 
 went back to see my mother once more and, wan- 
 dering about the country of my childhood's memo- 
 ries, had come to the city of Elsinore. There 
 I fell ill of a fever and lay many weeks in the 
 house of a friend upon the shore of the beautiful 
 Oeresund. One day when the fever had left me 
 they rolled my bed into a room overlooking the sea. 
 The sunlight danced upon the waves, and the dis- 
 tant mountains of Sweden were blue against the 
 horizon. Ships passed under full sail up and down 
 the great waterway of the nations. But the sun- 
 shine and the peaceful day bore no message to me. 
 I lay moodily picking at the coverlet, sick and dis- 
 
"That minute I knew." 
 
THE AMERICAN MADE 443 
 
 couraged and sore — I hardly knew why myself. 
 Until all at once there sailed past, close inshore, a 
 ship flying at the top the flag of freedom, blown out 
 on the breeze till every star in it shone bright and 
 clear. That moment I knew. Gone were illness, 
 discouragement, and gloom! Forgotten weakness 
 and suffering, the cautions of doctor and nurse. I 
 sat up in bed and shouted, laughed and cried by 
 turns, w^aving my handkerchief to the flag out 
 there. They thought I had lost my head, but I 
 told them no, thank God ! I had found it, and my 
 heart, too, at last. I knew then that it was my flag; 
 that my children's home was mine, indeed ; that I 
 also had become an American in truth. And I 
 thanked God, and, like unto the man sick of the 
 palsy, arose from my bed and went home, healed. , 
 
SIDE LIGHTS ON AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 By HENRY W. ELSON, A.M. 
 
 Lecturer of the American Society for the Extension of 
 University Teaching 
 
 Series I. — National Period before the Civil War 
 Series n, — The Civil War and Our Own Times 
 
 i2mo. Cloth. Price, 75 cents each 
 
 CONTENTS— VOLUME I. 
 
 Chapter I. — Declaration of Independence. Chapter II. — Framing of the 
 Constitution. Chapter III. — The Inauguration of Washington. Chap- 
 ter IV. — The Alien and Sedition Laws. Chapter V. — Fulton and the 
 Steamboat. Chapter VI. — The Lewis and Clarke Expedition. Chapter 
 VII. — Conspiracy of Aaron Burr. Chapter VIII. — The Missouri Com- 
 promise. Chapter IX. — The Monroe Doctrine. Chapter X. — Lafay- 
 ette's Visit. Chapter XL — The Caroline Affair. Chapter XII. — The 
 Campaign of 1840. Chapter XIII. — Discovery of Gold in California. 
 Chapter XIV. — The Underground Railroad. Chapter XV. — The Kan- 
 sas-Nebraska Bill. Chapter XVI. — The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. 
 Chapter XVII. — History of Political Parties. Chapter XVIII. — Rela- 
 tion of the States to the Nation. 
 
 CONTENTS— VOLUME II. 
 
 Chapter I. — The Presidential Election of i860. Chapter II. — Secession. 
 Chapter III. — Great Leaders in Congress during the War. Chapter 
 IV. — Events Leading up to the Civil War. Chapter V. — The Battle 
 of Gettysburg. Chapter VI. — Causes of Northern Success. Chapter 
 VII. — Reconstruction. Chapter VIII. — Impeachment and Trial of 
 Andrew Johnson. Chapter IX. — The Alabama Claims. Chapter X. — ■ 
 The Liberal Republican Movement of 1872. Chapter XI. — The Dis- 
 puted Presidential Election of 1876. Chapter XII. — The Garfield 
 Tragedy. Chapter XIII. — A Century of Tariff Legislation. Chapter 
 XIV. — The Spanish War. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
THE MEN WHO MADE THE NATION 
 
 An Outline of the History of the United States. I760-I865 
 
 By PROFESSOR EDWIN ERLE SPARKS 
 
 University of Chicago 
 
 Illustrated. Cloth. Crown 8vo. $2.00 
 
 " In selecting the material to be used in such condensed form 
 the author has evidently endeavored to bring the original sources 
 as far as possible to the general reader. Extracts from the 
 writings of the various men under consideration, from news- 
 papers and pamphlets, from the current poetry or song of their 
 day, frequently appear. In fact, nothing seems to have been 
 neglected which would add to the interest or hold the attention 
 of the reader. To the same end the book is profusely illustrated 
 with half-tones of old manuscripts, cartoons, views of historic 
 places, title pages of rare pamphlets, etc." — Book Reviews. 
 
 " Not biographical sketches, but a recital of the chief events 
 of the past century and a half, involved in making the American 
 people what they are to-day." — Brooklyn Eagle. 
 
 " Professor Edwin Erie Sparks, of the University of Chicago, 
 has written the history with the idea that men are of more interest 
 to the general reader than measures, and has therefore endeavored 
 to keep the personal element in mind." — Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOEK