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Riis, Jacob A., 1849-1914

"The Making of an American"


Also, I am clumsy, and impatient of details. The axe was ever more
to my liking than the graving-tool. I have lived to see the day of
the axe and enjoy it, and now I rejoice in the coming of the men
and women who know; the Jane Addamses, who to heart add knowledge
and training, and with gentle hands bind up wounds which, alas!
too often I struck. It is as it should be. I only wish they would
see it and leave me out for my sins.
But there! I started out to tell about how I came to be
a photographer, and here I am, off on the subject of philanthropy
and social settlements. To be precise, then, I began taking pictures
by proxy. It was upon my midnight trips with the sanitary police
that the wish kept cropping up in me that there were some way of
putting before the people what I saw there. A drawing might have
done it, but I cannot draw, never could. There are certain sketches
of mine now on record that always arouse the boisterous hilarity
of the family. They were made for the instruction of our first baby
in wolf-lore, and I know they were highly appreciated by him at the
time.


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