Chapter XII: The National Research Council 349 (3)

“No,” said I; and after some hesitation I added: “I ran away from the military frontier because the rulers of the land wanted to transform me into a Hungarian; I ran away from Prague because I objected to Austrian Teutonism; I shall run away from Delaware City also if, as your good mother suggested, I am expected to drop my Serbian notions and become an American. My mother, my native village, my Serbian orthodox faith, and my Serbian language and the people who speak it are my Serbian notions, and one might as well expect me to give up the breath of my life as to give up my Serbian notions.”

“You misunderstood my mother, Michael,” said the Vila; “she only referred to your notions about woman’s work, and you know that European women are expected to do the hard work for which only men are strong enough.”

“Very true,” said I; “the strongest and ablest men in Europe spend the best part of their lives on battle-fields, or training for the battle-fields; this is particularly true of the Serbian people. This forces our Serbian women to do some of the hard work which men should do.” This gave me a fitting opportunity to say a few things in favor of the spiritual influence of the Serbian women by describing the position of the Serbian woman as she is represented in the Serbian ballads--of Chuchuk Stana, the wife of Hayduk Velyko, who urged her hero husband to sacrifice his life rather than surrender the eastern frontier of Serbia, which, during the Serbian revolution, he was defending against vastly superior Turkish forces; of the maid of Kossovo, who at the risk of her life and liberty visited the battle-field of Kossovo in order to administer the last spiritual aid to the fallen and dying heroes; of Yevrosima, mother of Prince Marko, the national hero of the Serbian race, whose counsel and advice were the only guiding star to Marko throughout his stormy life. I told her also that I should not be a witness to that heavenly scene on the banks of the Delaware that Sunday afternoon if it had not been for my mother, who had urged me to go into the world and learn new things, which I could not learn in my native peasant village. Young Vila was much impressed by my Serbian tales, and by my pleading in behalf of the Serbian women, and then she asked me whether I had ever heard of Martha Washington, the wife of George Washington, the national hero of America. I confessed complete ignorance. Pointing to the golden ripples of the sun-kissed Delaware River, she said that it did not always look as bright and peaceful, and then described its appearance when in the middle of winter its surface is covered with broken ice, which, tossed by the waves of the angry river, makes a passage across it next to impossible. But in January, 1777, George Washington, the commander of the retreating American armies, crossed it, and on the other side of the river, near Trenton, surprised the advancing victorious British armies and defeated them, turning American defeat into American victory. “Washington,” she said, “just like Hayduk Velyko, was ready to sacrifice his life while crossing the treacherous ice-fields of the angry Delaware in order to strike a timely blow for the safety of his country.” And she was inclined to believe, she said, that Martha Washington acted at that critical moment just as Chuchuk Stana did. From that day on, Washington was to me the Hayduk Velyko of America, and the name of the Delaware River inspired me always with thoughts of deep veneration. Vila showed me that America, like Serbia, was also a land of heroes. The rest of that glorious Sunday afternoon was spent in Vila’s answering my numerous questions concerning George Washington and the war of the American Revolution. It was the most inspiring afternoon which I had experienced in America, and I felt that, after all, there might be many things in America which were just as great as those great things of which the Serbian guslar sings in the national ballads of Serbia. Vila had succeeded in welding the first link between my Serbian traditions and the traditions of America. I apologized to her for misunderstanding her mother’s suggestion that I become an American as soon as possible, and confessed that I was much less anxious than I had thought I was a few moments before to run away from the shores of the historic Delaware.

After Vila discovered my lively interest in American history, she continued her English lessons to me by telling me stories relating to early American history, which I repeated to her. Jamestown, South St. Mary, in southern Maryland, and Virginia figured big in these tales. When I first heard of the _Mayflower_, a year or so later, and of its landing at Plymouth Rock, I wondered why Vila never mentioned that great historical event. She never mentioned Lincoln, and changed conversation when I once called him the American Prince Marko. America north of the Delaware River was very little in her mind, and even Philadelphia was mentioned only on account of the Liberty Bell and the Declaration of Independence.

One evening, Vila’s mother asked me about my mother and her hopes for my future. Remembering her remarks concerning the spiritual influence of the American women upon the coming generation, I gave her a glowing account of my mother, and wound up by saying that she did not expect me to become an American farmer, and that I came to America to learn what I could not learn in a peasant country like that of my native village. She was much touched, and then in simple and solemn language she revealed to me a new truth which I never forgot and which I found confirmed by all my experiences in this great land, the truth, namely, that this is a country of opportunities which are open equally to all; that each individual must seek these opportunities and must be prepared to make good use of them when he finds them. She commended me warmly for making good use of all the opportunities which I had found on the farm, and advised me strongly to go in search of new opportunities. Vila agreed with her, and I prepared to leave the hospitable shores of Delaware.

I made my return trip to Philadelphia on the same boat which had brought me to Delaware City. Things looked different from what they had on my first trip. The farmers of Delaware, my fellow passengers on the boat, did not look like wooden images, and their speech was not inarticulate. I understood their language, and its meaning found a sympathetic response in me. The trip reminded me much of the trip on the Danube some eighteen months prior to that time. One of my fellow passengers, a youngster of about my age, pointed out a place to me which he called Trenton, and assured me that the boat was passing over the spot where Washington crossed the Delaware. His geography was faulty as I found out much later. But it was swallowed by a greenhorn like me and it thrilled me, and I remembered then the first view of the Cathedral of Karlovci, the seat of the Serbian Patriarch, which was pointed out to me from the Danube boat by the theological students. I felt the same thrill in each case, and I knew that America was getting a hold upon my Serbian heart-strings. My appearance attracted no attention, either on the boat or at Philadelphia after we landed. My hat and clothes were American, but my heavy top-boots, so useful on the farm, were somewhat too heavy for the warm June days in Philadelphia.

The Swiss foreman had directed me to a Swiss acquaintance of his who had a small hotel in Philadelphia. He was very eager to have me take all my meals at the hotel, but my total capital of ten dollars made me cautious; besides, my days from early morning till late at night were spent in the heart of the city. No other human being ever saw so much of Philadelphia during a stay of five days as I did, hunting for a job, searching new opportunities, as Vila’s mother expressed it. But I searched in vain. I gained new information about William Penn and Benjamin Franklin and saw many buildings the history of which is attached to these two great names, and I wondered why Benjamin Franklin ever deserted Boston to search new opportunities in a place like Philadelphia. But he did it, and succeeded. I was sure that neither he nor any other human being could walk more or chase after a job more diligently than I did, but then he was an American boy and he had a trade, and I was a Serbian greenhorn who did not know anything in particular, except how to drive a pair of mules. Besides, thought I, Philadelphia might have lost its wealth of opportunities since Franklin’s days. Such was my consolation while resting on a bench in Fairmount Park, near the grounds which were being prepared for the Centennial Exposition of 1876. I was lunching on a chunk of bread and thinking what would happen when the last three dollars, the remnant of my ten dollars which I brought from the Delaware farm, disappeared. A husky farmer approached me and addressed me in English, asking whether I wanted a job. “I do,” said I; “I have been chasing after one nearly a week, and I can’t chase much longer, because I see that my weary farm-boots are showing many signs of distress in their long daily struggles against these hot Philadelphia pavements.”

A day later found me in South St. Mary, in southern Maryland. I expected great things here, having heard so much of its early history from Vila. I was engaged to drive a pair of mules, dragging cultivators through corn and tobacco fields. As far as skill and physical exertion were concerned, the job was easy. But the climate was deadly, and social life was even more so. The only interesting people whom I found there were those buried in the old cemetery, some two hundred years prior to that time, when South St. Mary was quite an important place, and when the original settlers brought many fine things from England, and even bricks with which they built their houses. The only diversion I found was to read the legends on the tombstones in the old cemetery near the village church. Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River and the many inlets of the bay bordered by luxuriant vegetation gave the country a most picturesque appearance. The flourishing corn and tobacco fields suggested prosperity, but the only people who stirred and showed any activity were darkies, whose language I could not understand. I felt that as far as human speech was concerned, I was in a valley of silence, although the air was full of incessant sounds from all kinds of insects and water-animals. Mosquitoes, gnats, and flies, and the most oppressive, almost tropical, heat of the sun made work in the fields unbearable. Many a time while driving the phlegmatic mules through the broiling atmosphere of the tobacco-fields I thought of the icy blasts of the North Atlantic which I had experienced on the immigrant ship less than three months before, and I prayed that one of those icy breaths of the polar regions might wander astray and reach the flatlands of Chesapeake Bay. My prayer was not heard, and I was happy to be still alive at the end of the month, and then I took my wages of fifteen dollars and made a bee-line for the north. I hoped that in New York I might be able to catch some of the cold North Atlantic breezes and, after cooling off, pick up one of the many opportunities in the metropolis, which on the day when the immigrant ship landed me at Hoboken seemed to be seething with life and activity and brimful of all kinds of opportunities.

The Chesapeake boat landed me at Baltimore in the early hours of a Sunday morning, and the sound of beautifully tuned church-bells greeted me. I was told that Baltimore was a Catholic city and that the bells belonged to a Catholic cathedral. They almost persuaded me to stay in Baltimore and become a Roman Catholic, so sweet and soothing was their effect upon my soul. It recalled to my memory the lovely harmony of the church-bells of my native Idvor, and with that memory there appeared in my imagination the vision of my strongly orthodox mother and of St. Sava. This vision reminded me that I must say good-by to Roman Catholic Baltimore.

Forty-two years later I met Cardinal Gibbons in Baltimore during a visit to that city, when Johns Hopkins University conferred upon me the honorary LL.D. degree. I told him of the incident just referred to; he was in a jocular mood and said: “Too bad that you did not yield to the first effect of the Baltimore church-bells; you might be to-day the archbishop of this diocese, and perhaps even a cardinal.” “But, in that case, I should not have to-day the honorary LL.D. degree of Johns Hopkins; I would not exchange that for any other honor,” said I, returning jest for jest and watching the merry twinkle in the cardinal’s fluorescent eyes. Some months later President Butler, of Columbia University, and I happened to be descending in the same lift at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Presently Cardinal Gibbons entered, and President Butler introduced me to his Eminence, who, recalling our former meeting in Baltimore, said, “I know Professor Pupin, and it is a great honor, indeed, to ride in the same lift with two eminent men who carry so many distinguished academic honors,” and, as he looked at me with a genial smile which was brimful of Irish humor, I knew that he wished to remind me in a good-natured way of my high rating of an honorary Johns Hopkins degree in comparison with the honors attached to the titles of archbishop and cardinal.

The Pennsylvania train from Baltimore to New York delivered me to a ferry-boat, which landed me on West Street, where I found a small hotel kept by a German, a native of Friesland. He was a rugged old fellow who loved his low-German dialect, which I did not understand. He spoke in English to me, which, according to his son Christian, was much worse than mine, although he had been in America some twenty years. Christian was a yellow-haired and freckle-faced lad, of about my age, and we hit it off very well, forming a cross-matched team. He would have given anything, he said, to have my black hair and dark-red complexion. His almost white eyebrows and eyelashes and mischievous gray eyes and yellow freckles fascinated me. He was born in Hoboken and understood his father’s low-German dialect, but whenever addressed in it, by his father or by the Friesland sailors who frequented his father’s inn, he always answered in English, or, as he called it, “United States.”

Christian managed somehow to get away every now and then from the little hotel and to accompany me on my many long errands in search of a job. His familiarity with the town helped me much to master the geography of New York, and to find out what’s what and who’s who in the great metropolis. He seemed to be the only opportunity which New York offered to me, and it was a great one. Every other opportunity which appeared in newspaper advertisements had hundreds of applicants, and they were lined up at the place of the promised opportunity, no matter how early Christian and I reached the place. I was quite sure that those opportunity-chasers lined up soon after the first issue of the morning papers. I was told that the year before (in 1873) occurred the Black Friday panic, and that New York had not yet recovered from it. There were thousands of unemployed, although it was summer. One morning Christian told me that he had found a fine job for me, and he took me to a tug anchored quite near his father’s hotel. There were quite a number of husky laborers on the tug, which took us to the German docks in Hoboken. We were to stay there and help in the loading of ships, replacing the longshoremen who were on strike. The job assigned to me was to assist the sailors who were painting the ship and things on the ship. We never left the docks until the strike was over, which lasted about three weeks. At its termination I was paid and the tug delivered me to the little hotel on West Street, where Christian received me with open arms. I had thirty dollars in my pocket, and Christian told me that I looked as rich as Commodore Vanderbilt, whom Christian considered to be the richest man in New York. Christian took me to Chatham Square to buy a new suit of clothes and other wearing apparel, and I thought that the Jewish clothing dealers would cause a riot fighting for my patronage. The next day when I appeared at the breakfast-table in my new togs, Christian’s father could hardly recognize me, but when he did he slapped me on the back and exclaimed: “Who would ever think that you are a Serbian greenhorn?” “Nobody,” said Christian, resenting his father’s remark, and then he added with some hesitation: “But who would ever think that you are not a German greenhorn?” Christian’s father rebuked him and assured me that he meant no offense when he jokingly called me a Serbian greenhorn.

Christian was anxious to have me replenish my fortune, which was considerably reduced by my purchases in Chatham Square. He called my attention that morning to a big German who was drinking beer at the hotel bar after delivering several baskets filled with bread, rolls, and pies, and said that he was a rich and stingy baker, whose wagon, standing in front of the hotel, needed painting badly. I saw that the lettering needed speedy restoration. I assured my chum that my experience as assistant to the sailor painters on the Hoboken docks, in addition to my natural skill in free-hand drawing, qualified me for the job of restoring the lettering; Christian chuckled and made a bee-line for the stingy German baker. I got the contract to restore the lettering for five dollars and my meals, he to pay for the paints and the brushes, which were to remain my property. Christian formulated the contract and specified its terms very clearly; he was my business manager, and he enjoyed it hugely. The next day I lunched with the baker’s family, according to the terms of the contract, and after luncheon, as soon as the wagon had returned from its daily route, I started the work, interrupted by the supper only, and at nine o’clock in the evening the job was finished to the full satisfaction of the party of the first part. That evening found me richer by five dollars, several paint pots and brushes, a huge home-made apple pie, and a new and encouraging experience. Christian, for some reason unknown to me at that time, seemed to look upon the whole affair as a joke, but nevertheless he paid many compliments to my success as an artist. The next day we left bright and early for his father’s house in Hoboken, where in accordance with a plan conceived by Christian we were to spend some time in painting and papering several of the rooms. Profiting by the instructions which we received in sundry places, and after making several unsuccessful attempts, we managed to master the art and to finish the rooms to the full satisfaction of Christian’s father, who confessed that no Hoboken expert could have done better. “This painting is much better than that which you did on the baker’s wagon,” he said, “because you added some dryer to the paint.” “Right you are,” said Christian, “but I am to blame, because I purposely avoided telling Michael to use some dryer on the baker’s wagon. I wanted to make two jobs out of one.” “There will be several jobs, I am afraid,” said Christian’s father, “because on the day after the lettering was done the baker’s wagon was caught in a shower and all the fresh paint has been washed off, and the wagon looks like a show.” Christian roared with laughter, but seeing that I looked worried he whispered in my ear: “Don’t worry, it serves him right; he wanted a twenty-dollar job done for five dollars, because he took you for a greenhorn.” Christian made a new arrangement for the relettering of the wagon and I earned another five dollars, but no home-made apple pie. The German baker in Goerck Street was neither as cordial nor as hospitable as he was before.

Christian encouraged me in the belief that I was a painter and paper-hanger, and I felt that I had a trade; that feeling gave me much confidence. Christian’s mental attitude was a revelation to me. He actually believed that a boy can learn anything quickly and well enough to earn a living, if he will only try. He certainly could do anything, I thought, as I watched him in his little carpenter-shop in Hoboken. He also had a lathe and was quite expert in wood and metal turning, although he never served apprenticeship, as they do in Europe, in order to learn these things. When I told Christian that, according to my information on the immigrant ship, I was doomed to serve in America my apprenticeship as a greenhorn, he said that a European greenhorn must have told me that, and added, in an offhand manner, that I would be a greenhorn as long only as I thought that I was one. My description of a European apprenticeship amused him much, and he called it worse than the slavery which was abolished here by the Civil War only a few years prior to that date. When I asked him where he got all those strange notions, he told me that these notions were not strange but genuine American notions, and that he first got them from his mother, who was a native American. His father and his father’s German friends, he admitted, had the same notions as that greenhorn on the immigrant ship. Christian certainly looked like a Friesland German, but his thoughts, his words, and his manner of doing things were entirely different from anything I ever saw in Europe. He was my first glimpse of an American boy, just as the Vila on the Delaware farm was my first vision of an American girl, and her mother my first ideal of a noble American woman. They were the first to raise that mysterious curtain which prevents the foreign-born from seeing the soul of America, and when I caught a glimpse of it I loved it. It reminded me of the soul of my good people in Idvor, and I felt much more at home. The idea of being a greenhorn lost many of its horrifying features.

Christian left New York during that autumn to go into a shop in Cleveland. Without him, West Street had no attractions for me. I moved to the East Side of New York, so as to be near Cooper Union and its hospitable library. I spent many hours in it after my days of labor, or after my numerous unsuccessful daily trips in search of employment. It was my spiritual refuge when things looked black and hopeless. As winter approached, jobs grew alarmingly scarce, and my money was rapidly approaching the zero level. My hall-room in Norfolk Street was cheerless and cold, worse even than my little attic in Prague. Neither the room nor its neighborhood attracted me in daytime; I preferred to walk along the endless avenues. This exercise kept me warm and gave me a chance to make frequent inquiries for a job at painters’ and paper-hangers’ shops. When the prospects for work of this kind appeared hopeless, I struck a new idea. Instead of walking more or less aimlessly, in order to keep myself warm and familiarize myself with the ways of the great city, I followed coal-carts, and when they dropped the coal on the sidewalk I rang the bell and offered my services to transfer the coal from sidewalk to cellar. I often got the job, which sometimes was a stepping-stone to other less humble and more remunerative employment. After placing the coal in the cellar and getting my pay, I would often suggest to the owner that his cellar and basement needed painting badly; most cellars and basements do. The owner on being informed that I was a painter out of work, a victim of the economic crisis, often yielded. The idea of a young and ambitious painter being compelled to carry coal from sidewalk to cellar at fifty cents a ton made a strong plea, stronger than any eloquence could make. The scheme worked well; it did not lead to affluence, but my room-rent was always paid on time, and I never starved. Often and often, however, I had to keep my appetite in check. I always had enough to buy my bowl of hot coffee and a brace of crullers for breakfast in a restaurant on wheels, stationed near Cooper Union, where Third Avenue car-drivers took their coffee on cold winter mornings.

During periods of financial stringency my lunches were a bowl of bean soup and a chunk of brown bread, which the Bowery Mission supplied for five cents. It was a splendid meal on those cold winter days. But the Bowery Mission supplied a prayer-meeting with red-hot speeches as dessert; some of these addresses I really enjoyed; there were speakers, however, who offended me, because they confessed that they were reformed drunkards and godless men, and they assured their hearers, victims of the economic crisis just like myself, that they would prosper if they would only sign the pledge and vow to return to Jesus. I neither drank nor had I ever deserted Jesus; the reformed drunkard’s views of human life depressed me and drove me away from the Bowery Mission and from the Bowery.

Carrying coal from sidewalks to cellars and shovelling snow from sidewalks during that memorable winter were healthful jobs and cheerful enough, but not very remunerative; painting cellars and basements on Lexington Avenue was more remunerative, but fearfully depressing. To spend one’s time day after day in dark cellars and basements and pass the night in a cheerless hall-room in Norfolk Street, surrounded by neighbors who were mostly foreign-born of the most unattractive type, was too much for a Serbian youth who knew the beautiful world as one sees it from the pasture-lands of his native village and from the banks of golden Delaware. The reading-room of the Cooper Union library relieved somewhat my mental depression, although it was packed with sad-looking victims of the economic crisis, who found their way from the Bowery to the reading-room in order to keep warm. I longed to see God’s world of the country again.

The opportunity came, and about the middle of April of that year, 1875, I was on a farm in Dayton, New Jersey. My employer’s family consisted of his wife and an elderly daughter, and I was the only farm-hand on the place. They were apparently pleased with my work, and the ladies took much interest in my personal welfare. But the farmer, call him Mr. Brown, took it into his head that a youth who had lived one whole winter in Norfolk Street, New York, near the ungodly Bowery, needed spiritual regeneration. He was a very pious Baptist, and I soon discovered that in his everlasting professions of omissions and commissions he was even worse than that reformed drunkard whose sermons had driven me away from the Bowery Mission and its vigorous bean soup. Every Sunday his family took me to church twice and made me sit between the female members of the family. I felt that the congregation imagined that Mr. Brown and his family were trying their best to convert a godless foreign youth and make a good Baptist out of him. Mr. Brown seemed to be in a great hurry about it, because every evening he made me listen for an hour at least to his reading of the Bible, and before we parted for the night he would offer a loud and fervent prayer that the Lord might kindle his light in the souls of those who had been wandering in darkness. I know now that he had in mind the words of St. Luke, “To give light to them that sit in darkness,” but at that time I fancied that he referred to my painting operations in the cellars and basements of Lexington Avenue, and interpreted his prayers as having a special reference to me.

The joy of life which during the day I inhaled in the fresh fields of the early spring was smothered in the evening by Mr. Brown’s views of religion, which were views of a decrepit old man who thought of heaven only because he had no terrestrial problems to solve. He did his best to strip religion of every vestige of its poetic beauty, and of its soul-stirring spiritual force, and to make it appear like a mummy of a long-departed Egyptian corpse. A Serbian youth who looks to St. Sava, the educator, and to the Serbian national ballads for an interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, could not be expected to warm up for the religion which farmer Brown preached. I thought of Vila and her mother on the banks of the golden Delaware, and of the glorious opportunities which they pointed out ahead of me, and I wondered whether farmer Brown was one of these opportunities; if so, then there were some opportunities in America from which I wished to run away.

One Sunday evening, after the church service, farmer Brown introduced me to some of his friends, informing them that I was a Serbian youth who had not enjoyed all the opportunities of American religious training, but that I was making wonderful progress, and that some day I might even become an active member of their congregation. The vision of my orthodox mother, of the little church in Idvor, of the Patriarch in Karlovci, and of St. Sava, shot before my eyes like a flash, and I vowed to furnish a speedy proof that farmer Brown was wrong. The next day I was up long before sunrise, having spent a restless night formulating a definite plan of deliverance from the intolerable boredom inflicted upon me by a hopeless religious crank. The eastern sky was like a veil of gold and it promised the arrival of a glorious April day. The fields, the birds, the distant woods, and the friendly country road all seemed to join in a melodious hymn of praise to the beauties of the wanderer’s freedom. I bade good-by to the hospitable home of farmer Brown and made a bee-line for the distant woods. There the merry birds, the awakening buds on the blushing twigs, and the little wild flowers of the early spring seemed to long for the appearance of the glorious sun in the eastern sky. I did not, because I was anxious to put as much distance as possible between farmer Brown and myself before he knew that I had departed. When the sun was high in the heavens I made a halt and rested at the edge of woods on the side of a hill. A meadow was at my feet, and I, recalling the words of poet Nyegosh, watched for “the bright-eyed dewdrops to glide along the sunbeams to the heavens above.” The distant view as seen from the elevation of my resting-place disclosed, near the horizon, the silhouette of a town with towers and high roofs looking like roofs of churches. After some three additional hours of wandering, I crossed a bridge over a canal and found the distant town. There seemed to be one street only where business was done; the rest of the town appeared to me like so many beautiful convents. The tramp of many miles through woods and meadows without any breakfast had made me ravenously hungry and somewhat tired. The peaceful aspect of the monastic-looking town invited me to sit down and rest and enjoy some food. I bought a shining loaf of bread and, selecting a seat under an elm near a building which looked like the residence of the Archbishop of Prague, I started my breakfast. It consisted of bread only, and I enjoyed it as I had never enjoyed breakfast before. Many boys, looking like students, passed by on their way to the ecclesiastical-looking building; one of them watched my appetite as if he envied it, and inquired whether I should like some Italian cheese with my bread. He evidently thought that I was an Italian, being misled by my ruddy cheeks and dark-brown hair. I answered that Serbian cheese would suit me better. He laughed and said that Serbia and Serbian cheese were unknown at Princeton. I answered that some day perhaps Princeton might hear from Serbia. It is a curious fact that, in 1914, I was the first man who was invited to Princeton to give an address on the subject of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. The late Moses Taylor Pyne was my host, and I pointed out to him the elm in front of Nassau Hall where I had breakfasted some forty years prior to that time. The students received my address very enthusiastically; Dernburg addressed them two weeks later, and their heckling broke up the meeting.

After finishing the loaf, I basked in the warm rays of the mellow April sun, and fell asleep and dreamed that in the building where the students went there was a large assembly of people who had gathered there for the purpose of conferring some academic honor upon me. When I woke up, I thought of the letter which I had written to my mother from Hamburg, a year before, promising that I would soon return rich in learning and in distinguished honors. The dream reminded me that my promise was carefully recorded in the mechanism which controlled my consciousness.

Princeton was unlike anything that I had ever seen up to that time. I had read about Hilendar, the famous monastery on Mount Athos, on the Ægean Sea, founded by St. Sava in the twelfth century. I had seen pictures of its buildings, where monks lived the life of solitude and study. Princeton, with its many monastic-looking buildings, I imagined was such a place, where young men were given every opportunity to study and become learned men so as to be able to devote their lives effectively to such work as St. Sava did. As I walked slowly and thoughtfully toward the railroad-station, a student met me and engaged me in conversation. He was a little older than myself; kindness and intelligence beamed from every feature of his handsome face. He knew a great deal about Serbia, and even about the Serbs of Austria-Hungary, and when I told him that I had come to America in search of knowledge, he expressed the hope that he might some day see me enrolled as a student in Princeton. A student at Princeton! With fellow students and friends like this divinely handsome and gentle youth who accompanied me to the station! Impossible! thought I, as I looked through the car-window and saw the academic halls of Princeton gradually disappear in the distance and realized at the same time that the train was taking me back to the Bowery. Eight years later I read the letter which I wrote to my mother describing Princeton, in which, in order to encourage her, I had expressed a strong hope that some day I might write to her and sign myself a student at Princeton.

I may add here that my good friend Henry Fairfield Osborn, the distinguished scientist, was a sophomore at Princeton during that year. He might have looked just like that gentle youth who showed me the way to the railroad-station. President Wilson entered Princeton in the autumn of that year.

III

THE END OF THE APPRENTICESHIP AS GREENHORN

The visions of Princeton persisted in my mind like after effects of strong light upon the retina. That gentle youth’s suggestion that he might some day see me enrolled as a student at Princeton kept ringing in my ears, and sounded like mockery. A peasant boy from a Serb village who a little over two years previously was wearing a peasant’s sheepskin coat and cap to become a fellow student of those youths who looked like young aristocrats seemed impossible. A European aristocrat would never have suggested such a thing, and that puzzled me. I saw an endless chain of difficult things between me and my enrolment as a student at Princeton, the home for gentle American youth. Social unpreparedness, I felt, was a much more serious difficulty than unpreparedness in things which one can learn from books. This difficulty could not be overcome by associating with people east of the Bowery, and I was heading that way. The nearer the train approached New York the less anxious I was to return to it. From Nassau Hall to the Bowery was too abrupt a change, and from the Bowery to Nassau Hall the change would have been even more abrupt. I compromised and looked up Christian’s home on West Street.

Christian was still in Cleveland, but his father received me with open arms and promised to find me a job. In less than a week he found me one in a famous cracker factory on Cortlandt Street. An acquaintance of his with the name Eilers, a Frieslander and distant relative of a famous German writer of that name, was employed there; he steered me during my first experiences in the factory. A place was given me in a squad of boys and girls who punched the firm’s name upon a particular kind of biscuit. The job was easy from the point of view of physical strength, but it required much manual dexterity. In spite of my ambition to advance to a high place in the squad I progressed very slowly. I soon discovered that in manual dexterity the American boys and girls stood very high; my hands moved fairly rapidly after some practice, but theirs vibrated. I made up my mind that America was not a field in which I should gather many laurels by efforts requiring much manual dexterity. That idea had occurred to me before, when I first observed Christian handling his lathe. One day I was at the delivery desk of the Cooper Union Library, showing my library check to a youth behind the desk who countersigned it before a book was delivered to me. I noticed that he wrote rapidly, using sometimes his right hand and sometimes his left with equal ease and with much skill. “How can I ever compete with American boys,” said I, “when they can write with either hand better than I can write with my right hand!”

There never was a doubt in my mind that American adaptability which I observed on every occasion was in a great measure due to manual training which young people used to get here. Christian’s suggestion, mentioned above, that “a boy can learn anything quickly and well enough to earn a living if he will only try,” I saw in a new light, when I watched the work of those boys and girls in the factory. Yes, American boys can, but not European, thought I. Lack of early manual training was a handicap which I felt on every step during my early progress in America. My whole experience confirmed me in the belief that manual training of the youth gives them a discipline which school-books alone can never give. I discovered later that three of the greatest characters in American history, Franklin, Jefferson, and Lincoln, excelled in practical arts requiring dexterity, and that the constructive genius of the American nation can, in part, be traced to the discipline which one gets from early manual training.

AN EARLY VIEW OF COOPER UNION]

The great opportunities which, according to my good friends on the Delaware farm, awaited me in this country were certainly not in the direction of arts requiring great manual dexterity. The country of baseball offered, I thought, very few opportunities in this direction to a foreign-born boy. I was convinced of that every time I made a comparison between myself and the other boys who were doing the same manual work in the factory that I did. They were my superiors. In one thing, however, I thought I was their superior. They did not know much about the latest things described in the _Scientific American_, nor in the scientific supplements of the Sunday _Sun_, which I read assiduously with the aid of a pocket dictionary. The educational opportunities in the factory also escaped them. Jim, the boiler-room engineer and fireman of the factory, became interested in my scientific reading and encouraged me by paying several compliments to my interest in these things. He once suggested that some day, perhaps, I might become his scientific assistant in the boiler-room, if I did not mind shovelling coal and attending to the busy fires. He was joking, but I took him seriously. Every morning before the factory started I was with Jim, who was getting the steam up and preparing to blow the whistle and start the wheels going. I volunteered to assist him “shovelling coal and attending to the busy fires,” and after a time I understood the manipulations in the boiler-room quite well, according to Jim. The steam-engine excited my liveliest interest. It was the first opportunity that I had ever had to study at close range the operations of a steam-engine, and I made the most of it, thanks to Jim’s patient interest in my thirst for new information. He was my first professor in engineering.

One exceptionally hot afternoon during that summer found Jim prostrated by heat and I volunteered to run the boiler-room until he got well. I did it during the rest of that afternoon, much to the surprise of everybody, but was not allowed to continue, because a fireman’s license was required for that. When Jim returned I urged him to help me get a license, but he answered that an intelligent boy, eager to learn, should not cross the Atlantic for the purpose of becoming a fireman. “You must aim higher, my lad,” said Jim, and he added that if I continued to make good use of my pocket dictionary and of my scientific reading I should soon outgrow the opportunities offered by the New England Cracker Factory in Cortlandt Street. He never missed a chance to encourage me and to promise new successes for new efforts. In that respect he reminded me much of my mother.

Jim was a humble fireman and boiler-room engineer; his early education was scanty, so that he was not much on books; but he stood in awe in the presence of books. Referring to my habit of carrying a pocket dictionary in my hip pocket and looking up in it the meaning and the pronunciation of every word which was new to me, he would exclaim, jokingly, “Look in the book,” whenever some obscure points arose in our boiler-room discussions. His admiration for books was much increased when I related to him the story of James Watt and his experiments with the steam-engine, a story which I had dug out in an old encyclopædia in the Cooper Union Library. When I told him that James Watt had perfected his steam-engine and thus started the development of the modern steam-engine several years before the Declaration of Independence, he dropped a remark which I never forgot. He said: “The English made us write the Declaration of Independence, and they also gave us the steam-engine with which we made our independence good.” Jim was not much on learning but he was brimful of native practical philosophy.

Jim had a relative attending classes at Cooper Union and encouraged me to join several of its evening classes, which I did. I reported to him regularly the new things which I learned there. This practice benefited me even more than it did Jim, because in trying to explain to him the laws of heat phenomena, which were explained to me in the evening lectures at Cooper Union, I got a very much better hold of them. The first ideas of sound and light I caught on the pasture-lands of my native village; the first ideas of the phenomena of heat I caught in the boiler-room in Cortlandt Street and at Cooper Union lectures. These lectures, supplemented by Jim’s boiler-room demonstrations, proved much more effective than the instruction which I had received from my teacher Kos, in Panchevo. Kos was a Slovene, a native of that beautiful valley in Carniola, in the very bosom of the Dolomites; it is nearer to being an ideal dreamland than any other spot in Europe. To Kos, as to every true Slav, and particularly to the Slovenes of Carniola, the poetical side of physical phenomena appealed most strongly. Hence his patient listening to my enthusiastic professions of the belief that sound and light were different forms of the language of God. But as I watched the busy flames under Jim’s boilers, and understood how they were sustaining the strenuous efforts of steam to supply every hustling wheel in the factory with driving power, I understood for the first time that there is also a prose in physics not a bit less impressive than its poetry. It is this prose which interested Jim, the fireman, just as it did the Cooper Union lecturer. Their chief concern was what heat can do and not what it is. My Slavonic craving for knowing what heat is was soon satisfied by reading a poem in prose concerning the nature of heat. But of that later.

During my very first visits to the Cooper Union Library I saw a great painting hung up in the northwest corner of its large reading-room. It was called “Men of Progress,” and represented a group of very learned-looking men. I admired the painting, but took no pains to find out its meaning. One day, while reading in the Cooper Union Library, I saw quite near me an old gentleman standing and carefully scrutinizing what was going on. I imagined, at first, that he had stepped out of that painting. I looked again and found that the figure in the painting which I fancied had walked out was still there and that the old gentleman near me was undoubtedly the original from which the artist had painted that figure. The ambidextrous youth behind the library-desk told me afterward that the old gentleman was Peter Cooper, the founder of Cooper Union, and that he was one of the group of famous men represented in the great painting. He looked as I imagined the Patriarch of Karlovci must have looked. He was a striking resemblance to St. Sava, the Educator, as he is represented on an ikon in our church in Idvor. The same snowy locks and rosy complexion of saintly purity, and the same benevolent look from two luminous blue eyes. Peter Cooper was then eighty-five years of age, but he looked as lively as if he were going to live another eighty-five years. His personality as revealed by his appearance inspired me with awe, and I read everything I could lay my hands on concerning his life; then I read about the lives of the other great men who were associated with Peter Cooper in that historical painting. Some of these men were: Morse, the first promoter of the electric telegraph; Joseph Henry, the great physicist, head of the Smithsonian Institution, and founder of scientific bureaus in Washington; McCormick, the inventor of the reaper; Howe, the inventor of the sewing-machine; Ericsson, the engineer of the _Monitor_, and so forth. My study of their lives was a timely preparation for my visit to Philadelphia, to see the Centennial Exposition, the preparatory work for which I had seen two years prior to that time, when, returning from the Delaware farm, I stopped at Philadelphia to search for opportunities.

Dr. Morton Colt Saxton
Bogardus
McCormick

Peter Cooper Professor Henry Ericsson
Goodyear Dr. Mott
Mott Sickles

Bigelow
Burden Jennings
Morse Hoe Blanchard Howe

MEN OF PROGRESS--AMERICAN INVENTORS]

The work of those great captains of industry forming the group in the great painting, “Men of Progress,” was in evidence in every nook and corner of the Centennial Exposition. This great show impressed me as a splendid glorification of all kinds of wonderful mechanisms, driven by steam and animal power, which helped to develop the great resources of the United States. All scientific efforts exhibited there concerned themselves with the question of what things can do, rather than what they are. The show was also a glorification of the great men who first formulated, clearly stated, and fought for the ideals of the United States. I saw that fact proclaimed in many of the historical features of the exposition, and I did not fail to understand clearly that the show took place in Philadelphia because the Liberty Bell and the Declaration of Independence were first heard in Philadelphia. When I left Philadelphia and its show I carried away in my head a good bit of American history. The Americanization process which was going on within me was very much speeded up by what I saw at the Centennial Exposition.

On my return to New York I told Jim, the fireman, that he was right when he said: “The English made us write the Declaration of Independence, and they also gave us the steam-engine with which we made our independence good.” But, instructed by my study of the lives of men who were represented in the painting “Men of Progress,” and by what I learned at the Philadelphia exposition of these men and of the leaders of the American Revolution, I suggested to Jim that the steam-engine without great men behind it would have been of little avail. “Yes,” said Jim, “the Declaration of Independence without men of character and brains behind it would also have been of little avail; and the great aims of the Civil War without men like Lincoln and Grant behind them would have ended in a foolish fizzle. This country, my lad,” exclaimed Jim with much warmth, “is a monument to the lives of the men of brains and character and action who made it.” Jim threw out this chunk of wisdom with the same ease and in the same offhand manner which he displayed when he threw a few shovelfuls of coal upon the busy fires under his boilers. To him it was an obvious truth; to a lad like myself, who was accustomed to look upon countries as monuments to kings and princes and their victorious armies, it was a revelation; and I said so. This brought from Jim another epigrammatic remark to the effect that my trip to America would teach me nothing if it did not teach me first to squeeze out of my mind all foolish European notions and make room for new ideas which I might pick up here and there in this new world. Jim’s sayings were always short and to the point and their record in my mind never faded.