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Riis, Jacob A., 1849-1914

"The Making of an American"


Everything takes money. Our work takes a good deal. It happened
more than once, when the bills came in, that there was nothing to
pay them with. Now these were times to put to the test my faith,
as recorded above. My associates in the Board will bear me out
that it was justified. It is true that the strain was heavy once or
twice. I recall one afternoon, as do they, when we sat with bills
amounting to $150 before us and not a cent in the bank, so the
treasurer reported. Even as she did, the mail-carrier brought two
letters, both from the same town, as it happened--Morristown, N.J.
Each of them contained a check for $75, one from a happy mother
"in gratitude and joy," the other from "one stricken by a great
sorrow" that had darkened her life. Together they made the sum
needed. We sat and looked at each other dumbly. To me it was not
strange: that was my mother's faith. But I do not think we, any
of us, doubled after that; and we had what we needed, as we needed
it.


CHAPTER XII
I BECOME AN AUTHOR AND RESUME MY INTERRUPTED CAREER AS A LECTURER

For more than a year I had knocked at the doors of the various
magazine editors with my pictures, proposing to tell them how the
other half lived, but no one wanted to know.


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