William Shakespeare - "The Merry Wives of Windsor"

Thomas Sherlock - "The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ"

Merwin Webster - "The Short Line War"

Marjorie Allen Seiffert - "A Woman of Thirty"

The Making of an American

J >> Jacob A. Riis >> The Making of an American




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 committee which Dr. Felix
Adler called together in response to their appeal a year ago.
The Committee 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 for the poor, but with the poor,
the slum is taken in the rear and beaten already.

[Illustration: My Silver Bride.]

The world moves. The Bend is gone; the Barracks are gone; Mulberry
Street itself as I knew it so long is gone. Cat Alley, whence came
the deputation of ragamuffins to my office demanding 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 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 otherwise? I have been very happy. No man ever
had so good a time. Should I not be content?

[Illustration: Here comes the Baby!]

I dreamed a beautiful 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 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 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 American. There remains
to tell how I found out that he vas made and finished at last.
It was when I went back to see my mother once more and, wandering
about the country of my childhood's memories, 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
distant mountains of Sweden were blue against the horizon. Ships
passed under full sail up and down the great waterway of the
nations. But the sunshine and the peaceful day bore no message to
me. I lay moodily picking at the coverlet, sick and discouraged
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,
waving 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.

[Illustration: That minute I knew]

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.