In order to show how the pioneer settler[49] from Europe prospers2, let us begin with him at the wharf3. There floats the leviathan that has a whole villageful on board,—over twelve hundred. They are on deck; and a motley crowd they appear, for they are from all lands. Here is a girl dressed in the picturesque4 costume of Western Europe, and here a man with a great peak to his hat, an enormous long coat, his beard half way down his breast, a china pipe as big as a small teacup in his mouth, his wife like a bundle of meal tied in the middle, with immense earrings5, and an old colored handkerchief over her head. Behind them a half-dozen little ones with towheads of hair, looking as shaggy as Yorkshire terriers, blue-eyed and healthy. They are carrying copper6 coffee-pots and kettles; and away they march, eight hundred of them and more, up Broadway.
Here and there a man steps into a bakery, and comes out with a yard of bread, and breaks it up into hunks; and the little children grind it down without[50] butter, with teeth that are clean from lack of meat, with all the gusto of Sunday-school children with angel-cake at a picnic. They are soon locked in the cars, and night comes on. Go inside and you will see the good mother slicing up bolognas or a Westphalia ham, and handing around slices of black bread. After supper reading of the Bible and prayers; and then the little ones are put into sack-like nightgowns, and put up in the top bunks7, where they lie, watching their elders playing cards, until they fall asleep.
In the morning you go up to one of the women who is washing a boy and ask, as you see the great number of children around her, whether they are all hers: she courtesies and says, "Me no spik Inglish;" but by pantomime you make her understand, and she laughingly says, "Yah, yah;" and you think of Russell's song,—
"To the West, to the West, to the land of the free, Where Mighty8 Missouri rolls down to the sea; Where a man is a man, if he's willing to toil9, And the humblest may gather the fruits of the soil. [51]Where children are blessings10, and he who has most, Has aid for his fortune, and riches to boast; Where the young may exult11 and the aged12 may rest— Away, far away, to the land of the West!"
Their train is a slow one; it is side-tracked for the great fliers as they reach a single-track road.
The very cattle-trains have precedence of them. We watch their train as it reaches the great brown prairie; a little black shack13 or two is all you can see. The very tumble-weeds outstrip14 their slow-moving train; but after many weary hours they reach the end of the road, so far as it is built that day; it will go three miles farther to-morrow. As yet there are no freight-sheds, and they camp out on the prairie. The cold stars come out, the coyotes' sharp bark is heard in the distance, blended with the howl of the prairie wolf. Some of them dig holes in the side-hill, and put their little ones in them for the night. Tears come into the eyes of the mothers as they think of home and relatives beyond the seas.
[52]And there we will leave them for twelve years, and then on one of our transcontinental palaces on wheels we will follow the immigrant trail. Where they passed black ash-swamps and marshes15 and scattered16 homes, we go through villages with public libraries; where they touched the brown prairie, we view a sea of living green; where they took five days, we go in two; where they stepped off at the end of the road, we stop at a junction17 whose steel rails run on to the Pacific or the Gulf18 of Mexico; where they made the shelter for their little ones in the ground, we find a good hotel, a city alive to the finger-tips, electric cars on the streets, an opera-house, and a high school just about to keep its commencement. On the street we notice some people that appear somewhat familiar, but we are not sure. When we spoke19 to them twelve years ago they said with a courtesy, "Me no spik Inglish;" but now without a courtesy they talk in broken English. The man has lost his big beard, his clothes are well-made; the[53] wife is no longer like a bag of meal with a string around it. No; with a daily hint from Paris, she has all the feathers the law allows.
They are making for the high schoolhouse, and we follow them. A chorus of fifty voices, with a grand piano accompaniment, is in progress as we take our seats, after which a boy stands forth20 and declaims his piece. We should never know him. It is one of our tow-headed youngsters from the wharf. The old father sits with tears of joy running down his wrinkled face. He can hardly believe his senses. He remembers when his grandsire was a serf under Nicholas, and it seems too good to be true. But he hears the neighing of his percherons under the little church-shed; and by association of ideas his fields and waving grain, his flocks, herds21, and quarter section, rise before his mind's view, and he opens his eyes to see his favorite daughter step on the platform dressed in white, and great June roses drooping22 on her breast; and the old man's[54] eyes sparkle as his daughter steps down amid a round of applause as she says in the very spirit of old Cromwell, "Curfew shall not ring to-night."
And this is real. It has been going on for a quarter of a century. States with whole counties filled with Russians voting, and being the banner counties to have prohibition23 in the State's Constitution; or, like North Dakota, with nearly seventy per cent foreign voters, driving the lottery24 from them when needing money sorely. Men and women who could scarcely speak the English language living to see their sons senators and governors.
All the dismal25 prophecies about ruin from the immigrant are disproved as one looks over Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas to-day; and instead of having a great German nation on this side of the Atlantic, as one writer predicted, we have in the great agricultural States some of our stanchest American citizens.
One of the mightiest26 factors in human[55] life to-day is the language we use. Three centuries ago there were about 6,000,000 using it; to-day 125,000,000 speak the English tongue. The Duke of Argyle was once asked which was the best language. He said, "If I want to be polite I use the French, if I want to be understood I take the English, if I want to praise my Maker27 I take the Gaelic, my mother-tongue." Foreigners coming here think in their own language, even though they may be able to speak in ours; gradually they come to think in English, but still they dream in their mother-tongue; at last they dream, think, and speak in the language of the land, and become homogeneous with the nation.
God's greatest gift to this New World is the foreigner. The thought came to me while on my way to Savannah: Why did not the discoverers of the Western Hemisphere find a higher civilization than the one they left? Why should God have kept so large a portion of the[56] world hidden from the eyes of Europe for thousands of years? Had he not some grand design that in the fulness of time he would lead Columbus, like Abraham of old, to found a new nation?
Take your map and find those States which the stream of immigration has passed by, and in every case you find them behind the times. Strange how prejudice warps28 our vision! Jefferson said, "Would to God the Atlantic were a sea of flame;" and Washington said, "I would we were well rid of them, except Lafayette." Strange words for a man who would not have been an American had his ancestors not been immigrants. Hamilton, the great statesman, was an immigrant. Albert Gallatin the financier, Agassiz the scientist, and thousands of illustrious names, make a strong list. One-twelfth of the land foreigners!—but one-fourth of the union armies were foreigners too.
[57]WHAT THEY BECOME.
When Linn?us was under gardener, the head gardener had a flower he could not raise. He gave it to Linn?us, who took it to the back of a pine, placed broken ice around it, and gave it a northern exposure. In a few days the king with delight asked for the name of the beautiful gem29. It was the Forsaken30 Flower.
So there are millions of our fellow-men in Europe to-day, in a harsh environment, sickly, poor, and ready to die; but when they are transplanted, they find a new home, clothes, food, and, above all, the freedom that makes our land the very paradise for the poor of all lands. These immigrants have made the brown prairie to blossom as the rose, the wilderness31 to become like the garden of the Lord. They drove the Louisiana Lottery out of North Dakota; they voted for temperance in South Dakota. Their hearts beat warm for their native land, but they are true to their adopted country.
[58]The mixture of the nationalities is the very thing that makes us foremost: it has produced a new type; and if we but do our duty we shall be the arbitrator of the nations. There is no way to lift Europe so fast as to evangelize her sons who come to us. Sixteen per cent go home to live, and these can never forget what they saw here; did we but teach them aright, they would be an army of foreign missionaries32, fifty thousand strong, preachers of the gospel to the people in the tongue in which they were born, and thus creating a perpetual Pentecost.
One other great fact needs pointing out. The discovery of this land was by the Latin races; and yet they failed to hold it, lacking the genius for colonization33 for which the Anglo-Saxon is pre-eminent. During the last fifty years, over 13,000,000 immigrants have come to this land. Great Britain sent nearly 6,000,000; Germany, 4,500,000; Norway and Sweden, 939,603; Denmark, 144,858; the Netherlands, 99,522; Belgium, 42,102. Here we[59] have over 11,000,000 Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and Scandinavian, of the 13,000,000, and almost half of them speaking English, while Italy, Russia, Poland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and all other nations sent but 1,708,897 out of the 13,296,157. And we must note also that nearly all of the Latin races came within the last few years; so that we were a nation 50,000,000 strong before many of them came, and eighty per cent of all our people speak English.
No nation ever drove out its people without loss, as witness Spain and France with their Protestants and Huguenots. England took them, and they helped to make her great. Often when a nation has actually been conquered in war, she in turn conquers her victors and is made better. Germany conquered Rome; but Roman laws and Roman government conquered the invaders34, and made Germany the mother of modern civilization. Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons invaded Britain, and drenched35 her fields in blood. The Normans brought[60] their beef, their mutton, and their pork, but the English kept their oxen, sheep, and swine; and eventually from the Norman, Dane, and others came the Anglo-Saxon race. England has four times as much inventive genius as the rest of Europe, but America has ten times as much as England; and why? Because added to the English colony is all Europe; and in our own people we have the practical Englishman, the thoughtful German, the metaphysical Scot, the quick-witted Irishman, the sprightly36 Gaul, the musical and artistic37 Italian, the hardy Swiss, the frugal38 and clear-headed Swede and Norwegian; and all united make the type which the world will yet come to, the manhood which will recognize the inherent nobility of the race, its brotherhood39, and the great God, Father.
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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prospers
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| v.成功，兴旺( prosper的第三人称单数 ) | |
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wharf
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| n.码头，停泊处 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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earrings
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| n.耳环( earring的名词复数 )；耳坠子 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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bunks
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| n.（车、船等倚壁而设的）铺位( bunk的名词复数 )；空话，废话v.（车、船等倚壁而设的）铺位( bunk的第三人称单数 )；空话，废话 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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exult
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| v.狂喜，欢腾；欢欣鼓舞 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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outstrip
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| v.超过，跑过 | |
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marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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herds
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| 兽群( herd的名词复数 )； 牧群； 人群； 群众 | |
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drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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prohibition
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| n.禁止；禁令，禁律 | |
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lottery
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| n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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mightiest
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| adj.趾高气扬( mighty的最高级 )；巨大的；强有力的；浩瀚的 | |
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maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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warps
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| n.弯曲( warp的名词复数 )；歪斜；经线；经纱v.弄弯，变歪( warp的第三人称单数 )；使（行为等）不合情理，使乖戾， | |
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gem
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| n.宝石，珠宝；受爱戴的人 [同]jewel | |
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Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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colonization
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| 殖民地的开拓，殖民，殖民地化； 移殖 | |
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invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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sprightly
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| adj.愉快的，活泼的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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