th of members. In
fancy I again beheld the vision of long trains of lodge men going to
their yearly meeting, but this time, in a city of their own building,
and over the gateway to this red-roofed town I saw the legend:

THE CITY OF HAPPY CHILDREN

But alas for dreams! Any one can have them, but their realization is not
always possible. The men in the Moose before me had fought vainly for
these high ideals. At the end of my first year as director general I had
not made one-tenth the progress I had hoped for. Figuring on the rate
of progress I was making, I saw that a lifetime would be too short to
accomplish anything. It was then that I would have despaired, if my
Welsh blood had not been so stubborn. I summoned new courage and went on
with the work. At the end of the fourth year I began to see results
from my preliminary efforts. The convention of 1910 showed that the
membership was eighty thousand, distributed among three hundred and
thirty-three lodges. It was resolved to start the actual work of
founding an educational institution. A tax of two cents a week was
laid on members and later increased to four cents. Land was bought,
a building erected and in 1913 the school was dedicated by Thomas
R. Marshall, Vice-President of the United States. There were eleven
children established in the home. Soon the lodge membership increased
enormously. Having passed the hundred thousand mark it swept on to the
half million goal. The "Mooseheart idea," as we called it, had caught
the imagination of the men. To-day the city of Mooseheart in the Fox
River Valley, thirty-seven miles west of Chicago, is the home of more
than a thousand fatherless children and one hundred and fifteen mothers
who are there with their children, and several old men whose working
days are over. The dream of the Moose has come true. In many ways the
"City of Happy Childhood" is the most beautiful and the most wonderful
city in the world.

CHAPTER XLV. THE DREAM COMES TRUE

What kind of school is Mooseheart? That can not be answered by making
comparisons, for it is the only school of its kind. When the Moose
committee met to decide what sort of school it would build, somebody
suggested a normal school, a school to teach the young how to become
teachers.

I objected. "The world is well supplied with teachers," I said.
"Everybody wants to teach the other fellow what to do, but nobody cares
to do it. Hand work will make a country rich and mouth w