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Riis, Jacob A., 1849-1914

"The Making of an American"


I hate darkness and dirt anywhere, and naturally want to let in
the light. I will have no dark corners in my own cellar; it must
be whitewashed clean. Nature, I think, intended me for a cobbler,
or a patch-tailor. I love to mend and make crooked things straight.
When I was a carpenter I preferred to make an old house over to
building a new. Just now I am trying to help a young couple set up
in the laundry business. It is along the same line; that is the
reason I picked it out for them. If any of my readers know of a
good place for them to start I wish they would tell me of it. They
are just two--young people with the world before them. My office
years ago became notorious as a sort of misfit shop where things
were matched that had got mislaid in the hurry and bustle of life,
in which some of us always get shoved aside. Some one has got to
do that, and I like the job; which is fortunate, for I have no head
for creative work of any kind. The publishers bother me to write
a novel; editors want me on their staffs. I shall do neither, for
the good reason that I am neither poet, philosopher, nor, I was
going to say, philanthropist; but leave me that.


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