ver.

At the farthest end of the web he came at last to a strand that all at
once seemed strange to him. All the rest went this way or that--the spider
knew every stick and knob they were made fast to, every one. But this
preposterous strand went nowhere--that is to say, went straight up in the
air and was lost. He stood up on his hind legs and stared with all his
eyes, but he could not make it out. To look at, the strand went right up
into the clouds, which was nonsense.

The longer he sat and glared to no purpose, the angrier the spider grew.
He had quite forgotten how on a bright September morning he himself had
come down this same strand. And he had forgotten how, in the building of
the web and afterward when it had to be enlarged, it was just this strand
he had depended upon. He saw only that here was a useless strand, a fool
strand, that went nowhere in sense or reason, only up in the air where
solid spiders had no concern....

"Away with it!" and with one vicious snap of his angry jaws he bit the
strand in two.

That instant the web collapsed, the whole proud and prosperous structure
fell in a heap, and when the spider came to he lay sprawling in the hedge
with the web all about his head like a wet rag. In one brief moment he had
wrecked it all--because he did not understand the use of _the strand from
above_.

The following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author or
on kindred subjects.

_THE WORKS OF JACOB A. RIIS_

_The death on May 26, 1914, of JACOB A. RIIS, social reformer and civil
worker, "New York's Most Useful Citizen," as he was deservedly called by
one who best knew the scope and extent of his efforts--ex-President
Roosevelt--awakens renewed interest in the works of this "Ideal American,"
books that should find a place in every American home._

_They illustrate as few other books can the possibilities of American life
and reveal how from an almost penniless and friendless immigrant, at times
on the verge of want in the search for work, he rose through trying and
strenuous experiences by the sheer force of will and character, to
well-deserved fame and an honored position in the councils of the
mightiest of the land._

THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN. An Autobiography

"It is refreshing to find a book so unique and captivating as 'The Making
of an American,' the volume in which Jacob A. Riis tells the strange story
of his life. For more than a quarter of a century Mr.