The Washington times., 1911-05-16
CHAPTER XIII.
I Become a Citizen.

a S have said, there were still
! ~ many opportunities which /
| n didn't have time to improve.
The three of US seemed to
! have breathed in down here some spirit
which left us almost feverish in our de-
sire to learn. Whether It was the oppor-
tunity which bred the desire or the de-
I sire as expressed by all these newcom-
ers, fresh from the shackles of their
old lives, which created the opportunity,
l leave to the students of such matters.
All know is that we were offered the
best in practical information. such as
the trade schools and the night hign
schools; the best in art, the best IN
music, the best in the drama. l am
speaking always Of the newcomer-tne
emigrant.
cheaper element of the na:ive-born.
whether of foreign or Of American
descent, who spent their evenings on
the street or at the cheap thcaters or
in the barrooms.
This class despised the whole busi-
ness. Incidentally these were the men
who haunted the bread line, the Sal
vation Army barracks, and were the
first to join in any public demonstra-
ton against the rich.
The women, not always so much by
their own fault, were the type which
keeps the charitable associations busy.
I'm not saying that among these there
were not often cases of sheer hard
luck.
Now and then sickness played the
devil with a family and more often
the cuSSedneSS of some one member
dragged down half dozen innocent
ones with him, but l do say that when
misfortune did come to this particu-
lar class they didn't buck up to it as
Helen bennington did or use such
means as were at their disposal to
pull out OF 1t.
They just caved in. Even In their
daily lives, when things were going
well with them, they lost in the gilt
ter and glare of the city that spark
which my middle-class friends lost
by stagnation.
Because there was no poetic ro-
nance left in their own lives, they
despised it in the lives of others and
laughed at 1t in art. Whatever went
back into the past, they looked upon
scornfully as ancient"
They lived each day as 1t came with
a pride in being up-to-date. AS a re-
suit they preferred musical comedy
of the horse play kind to real music:
they preferred cheap melodrama to
Shakespeare.
They lived and breathed the spirit OF
the yellow journals.
/ don't know what sort of an educa-
ton 1t is the Italians come over here
with. but they were constant sur
prise TO me IN Ol
the best in art. And 1t was genuine
it was simple.
I've heard a good many jokes about
the foolishness of giving them a diet
of Shakespeare and Beethoven, of
Maeterlinck and Mascagni, but that
sort of talk comes either from the
outsiders or from the Great White
Way crowd.
When you've seen Italians not only
crowd in to the free productions down
ha, h,,t mt
money to attend the best theaters:
when you've heard them whistle grand
opera at their work and save hard
earned dollars to spend on II down
the art museums on free DAYS and
spend a half dollar to look at some
private exhibition of a fellow coun-
tryman's you begin to think. II you're
honest. that the laugh is on you:
They made me feel ashamed not only
because was ignorant, but
because after I became more familiar
with the works Of the masters I was
slower than they to appreciate them.
In many cases I couldn't.
didn't fatter myself either that this
was because of my superior frankness
or up-to-dateness. I knew well enough
that 1t was because of a lack In me and
my ancestors.
Scarcely a week passed when there
wasn't something worth seeing or hear
either through a settlement house or
through the generosity Of some interest
private patron.
However it came it was always
through the medium Of a class which
until now had been only name to me.
This was the independently well-to-do
American class-the Americans who had
partly made and partly inherited their
fortunes and had not yet come to mis-
use them. 1t Is a class still active in
American life, running however more to
the professions than to business. Many
of their family names have been famil- |
lar in history to succeeding generations
since the early settlement of New Eng
land. They we're intellectual leaders
then and they are intellectual leaders
now. If 1 could with propriety I'd
like to give here list of half a dozen |
of these men and women who come, in
time, to revive for me my belief that
after all there still is left in this coun- |
try the backbone of worthy old stock |
But they don't nee1 any such trivial
tribute as 1 might sive them.