Q. Please confine your answers to the questions. That is another matter not spoken of in public; though to be quite frank with you, public taste seems to be changing somewhat in this respect.
A. I am very glad to hear it. I would like to know--
Q. Not now, not now.--You say you have learned by this time many of the customs of the country?
A. Oh, yes, sir! I can dress myself, and wash my face (though perhaps not in a manner quite above criticism), count the change which the grocer gives me, tell the time by a clock, say “Yes, ma’am” and “Thank you”--and I am beginning to be adept in the great national game of baseball.
Q. Have you decided what you would do if you were permitted to take part in our adult activities?
A. No, sir; I knew a boy who had a steam-engine, but he moved away before I got a chance to see how it worked.
Q. You spoke of truck-driving just now. Do you know where the truck-driver is going with his load?
A. Yes, sir; Jim’s father got three fingers cut off in a factory.
Q. Do you know where the sun rises and sets?
A. It rises in the East and sets in the West.
Q. How does it get from the West back to the East during the night?
A. He was the Father of his country, and he never told a lie.
Q. If we let you take part in the government of our country, what ticket would you vote?
A. The Republican ticket. My father is a Republican.
Q. What would you do if you had ten cents?
A. I’d go to see Charley Chaplin in the moving-picture show.
And now, gentlemen, you have heard the witness. He has told the truth--and nothing but the truth--and he would have told the whole truth if I had not been vigilant in defence of your modesty. He is, as he says, a foreigner, incompletely naturalized. In certain directions his development has proceeded rapidly. He shows a patriotism and a sense of political principles which are quite as mature as most of ours. But in other directions there is much to be desired. He does not know what kind of world it is he lives in, nor has he any knowledge of how he could best take his place, with the most satisfaction to himself and his fellow-men, in that world--whether as farmer or engineer, poet or policeman, or in the humbler but none the less necessary capacities of dustman or dramatic critic.