I was dreadfully overworked. The doctor urged
a change. I did not need much urging. So I sold the paper for five
times what I had paid for it, and took the first steamer for home.
Only the other day, when I was lecturing in Chicago, a woman came
up and asked if I was the Riis she had travelled with on a Hamburg
steamer twenty-five years before, and who was going home to be
married. She had never forgotten how happy he was. She and the rest
of the passengers held it to be their duty to warn me that "She"
might not turn out as nice as I thought she was.
"I guess we might have spared ourselves the trouble," she said,
looking me over.
Yes, they might. But I shall have to put off telling of that till
next time. And I shall let Elizabeth, my Elizabeth now, tell her
part of it in her own way.
CHAPTER VII
ELIZABETH TELLS HER STORY
How well I remember the days of which my husband has written--our
childhood in the old Danish town where to this day, in spite of my
love for America, the air seems fresher, the meadows greener, the
sea more blue, and where above it all the skylark sings his song
clearer, softer, and sweeter than anywhere else in the world!
I--it is too bad that we cannot tell our own stories without all
the time talking about ourselves, but it is so, and there is no
help for it.
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