pose that if I had lived for fifty years under the old
conditions I would have met one of them. There was no meeting ground
for us, for we had nothing in common. I couldn't possibly interest
them and I'm sure I was too busy with my own troubles to take any
interest in them even if I had known of their existence.

Even down here I resented at first their presence as an intrusion.
Whenever I met them I was inclined to play the cad and there's no
bigger cad on the face of the earth than a workingman who is beginning
to feel his oats. But as I watched them and saw how earnest they were
and how really valuable their efforts were I was able to distinguish
them from still another crowd who flaunted their silly charities in
the newspapers. But these other quiet men and women were of different
calibre; they were the ones who established pure milk stations, who
encouraged the young men of real talent like Giuseppe, and who headed
all the real work for good done down here.

They came into my life when I needed them; when perhaps I was swinging
too far in my belief that the emigrant was the only force for progress
in our nation. I know they checked me in some wild thinking in which I
was beginning to indulge.

I find I have been wandering a little. But what we thought, counted
for as much towards the goal as what we did and even if the thinking
is only that of one man--and an ordinary man at that--why, so for that
matter was the whole venture. I want to say again that all I'm trying
to do is to put down as well as I can remember and as well as I am
able, my own acts and thoughts and nothing but my own. Of course that
means Ruth's and Dick's too as far as I understood them, for they
were a part of my own. I don't want what I write to be taken as the
report of an investigation but just as the diary of one man's
experience.

If I had had the time I could have seen at least two of Shakespere's
plays--presented by amateurs, to be sure, but amateurs with talent and
enthusiasm and guided by professionals. I could have heard at least a
half dozen good readers read from the more modern classics. I could
have listened to as many concerts by musicians of good standing. I
could have heard lectures on a dozen subjects of vital interest. Then
there were entertainments designed confessedly to entertain. In
addition to these there were many more lectures in the city itself
open free to the public and which I now for the first time learned
abo