ter
except the six children. When the porter asked her where her baggage
was, she smiled sadly and said that was a question for a wiser head
than hers to answer. She was glad enough to have all her babies safe.
Everything we owned was on our backs. Our patient father had toiled
for months in Pittsburgh and had sent us nearly every cent to pay our
transportation from the Old World. Now he was out of a job, and we were
coming to him without as much as a bag of buns in our hands.

Before leaving New York, I want to tell what kind of city it was in
those days.

In a recent magazine article a writer picturing our arrival at Castle
Garden said that we "climbed the hill into Broadway and gazed around
at the highest buildings we had ever seen." But there were no tall
buildings in New York at that time. The spires of Trinity Church and St.
Paul's towered above everything. And we had seen such churches in the
Old Country. Brooklyn Bridge had just been built and it overtopped the
town like a syrup pitcher over a plate of pancakes. The tallest business
blocks were five or six stories high, and back in Wales old Lord
Tredegar, the chief man of our shire, lived in a great castle that was
as fine as any of them.

The steel that made New York a city in the sky was wrought in my own
time. My father and his sons helped puddle the iron that has braced this
city's rising towers. A town that crawled now stands erect. And we whose
backs were bent above the puddling hearths know how it got its spine. A
mossy town of wood and stone changed in my generation to a towering city
of glittering glass and steel. "All of which"--I can say in the words of
the poet--"all of which I saw and part of which I was."

The train that was taking us to Ohio was an Erie local, and the stops
were so numerous that we thought we should never get there. A man on the
train bought ginger bread and pop and gave us kids a treat. It has been
my practice ever since to do likewise for alien youngsters that I meet
on trains.

When we reached Hubbard, father met us and took us to an uncle's. We did
not stop to wash the grime of travel from our faces until after we had
filled our stomachs. Once refreshed with food, our religion returned to
us, in the desire to be clean and to establish a household. I learned
then that food is the first thing in the world. Cleanliness may be next
to godliness, but food is ahead of them all, and without food man loses
his cleanliness, godl