irs_:

[Illustration: One Door that has been opened: St. John's Park in Hudson
Street,--once a Graveyard.]

"We give our heads and our hearts to our country. One country, one
language, one flag!"

Fear not, eagle! While that gate is open let no one bar the one you
guard. While the flag flies over the public school, keep it aloft over
Ellis Island and have no misgivings. The school has the answer to your
riddle.

About once a week I am asked: Would I shut out any, and whom and how and
why? Sometimes, looking at it from the point of view of the tenement and
the sweat shop,--that is to say, the city,--I think I would. And were
that all, I certainly should. But then, there comes up the recollection
of a picture of the city of Prague that hangs in a Bohemian friend's
parlor, here in New York. I stood looking at it one day, and noticed in
the foreground cannon that pointed in over the city. I spoke of it,
unthinking, and said to my host that they should be trained, if against
an enemy, the other way. The man's eye flashed fire. "Ha!" he cried,
"here, yes!" When I think of that, I do not want to shut the door.

Again, there occurs to me an experience the police had a few years ago
in Mulberry Street. They were looking for a murderer, and came upon a
nest of Italian thugs who lived by blackmailing their countrymen. They
were curious about them, and sent their names to Naples with a request
for information. There came back such a record as none of the detectives
had ever seen or heard of before. All of them were notorious criminals,
who had been charged with every conceivable crime, from burglary to
kidnapping and "maiming," and some not to be conceived of by the
American mind. Five of them together had been sixty-three times in jail,
and one no less than twenty-one times. Yet, though they were all "under
special surveillance," they had come here without let or hindrance
within a year. When I recall that, I want to shut the door quick. I sent
the exhibit to Washington at the time.

[Illustration: Dr. Jane Elizabeth Robbins, the "Woman Doctor."]

But then, again, when I think of Mrs. Michelangelo, in her poor mourning
for one child run over and killed, wiping her tears away and going
bravely to work to keep the home together for the other five until the
oldest shall be old enough to take her father's place; and when, as now,
there strays into my hand the letter from my good friend, the "woman
doctor" in the slum, in which