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Riis, Jacob A., 1849-1914

"The Making of an American"


Gray-haired and with old-time roots in a foreign soil, I dream with
them yet of the day that shall see it pulled up and hurled over
the river where my fathers beat back the southern tide a thousand
years.
Jess? He went away satisfied. He will be there, when needed. His
calm eyes warranted that. And I--I went back to the old home, to
Denmark and to my mother; because I just couldn't stay away any
longer.
We had wandered through Holland, counting the windmills, studying
the "explications" set forth in painfully elaborate English on its
old church walls with the information for travellers that further
particulars were to be obtained of the sexton, who might be found
with the key "in the neighborhood No. 5." We had argued with the
keeper of the Prinzenhof in Delft that William the Silent could
not possibly have been murdered as he said he was--that he must
have come down the stairs and not gone across the hall when the
assassin shot him, as any New York police reporter could tell from
the bullet-hole that is yet in the wall--and thereby wounding his
patriotic pride so deeply that an extra fee was required to soothe
it.


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