"It is touching!" whispered my guide, and I saw she had caught a faint reflection of that glow that lit the children.
I told her it was the most touching thing I had seen in America.
Think of the immense promise in it! Think of the flower of belief and effort that may spring from this warm sowing! We passed out of this fluttering multiplication of the most beautiful flag in the world, into streets abominable with offal and indescribable filth, and dark and horrible under the thunderous girders of the Elevated railroad, to our other quest for that morning, a typical New York tenement. For I wanted to see one, with practically windowless bedrooms....
The Educational Alliance is of course not a public institution; it was organized by Hebrews, and conducted for Hebrews, chiefly for the benefit of the Hebrew immigrant. It is practically the only organized attempt to Americanize the immigrant child. After the children have mastered sufficient English and acquired the simpler elements of patriotism--which is practically no more than an emotional attitude towards the flag--they pass on into the ordinary public schools.
"Yes," I told my friend, "I know how these children feel. That, less articulate perhaps, but no less sincere, is the thing--something between pride and a passionate desire--that fills three-quarters of the people at Ellis Island now. They come ready to love and worship, ready to bow down and kiss the folds of your flag. They give themselves--they want to give. Do you know I, too, have come near feeling that at times for America."...
We were separated for a while by a long hole in the middle of the street and a heap of builder's refuse. Before we came within talking distance again I was in reaction against the gleam of satisfaction my last confession had evoked.
"In the end," I said, "you Americans won't be able to resist it."
In those crowded noisy East Side streets one has to shout, and shout compact things. "_This!_" I said to the barbaric disorder about us. "Lynching! Child Labor! Graft!"
Then we were separated by a heap of decaying fish that some hawker had dumped in the gutter.
My companion shouted something I did not catch.
I looked at her, bright and courageous and youthful, a little overconfident, I thought, but extremely reassuring, going valiantly through a disorderly world of obstacles, and for the moment--I suppose that waving bunting and the children's voices had got into my head a little--I forgot all sorts of things....