There are the Slavic peasants, who on their native soil, prodded by the goad, moved ox-like along an endless furrow, drawing the plow of autocracy.
Next is the Italian, volatile and yet static with his age-long burdens, with his fiery nature cramped into his diminutive frame.
Here is the Negro, the child-man, the shackles of whose slavery are scarcely broken.
The Asiatic, too, comes with hardly courage enough to lift his softly treading feet; while leading them all is this strident, giant child of the Anglo-Saxon race whose wind-swept cradle was rocked by freedom, and who with dominant will has spanned the oceans and crossed the mountains.
Of these myriads whom he leads, some will be a drag upon progress, and detain the strong or perhaps retard the race; yet they are trying to keep up, and by their efforts, by delving in the deep, by feeding with their brute strength our huge enginery, may make the flowering of the American spirit easier.
Yes, the Anglo-Saxon is leading them; but will he continue to lead, now that he no longer travels in the prairie schooner, but in the automobile—now that he wields the golf club and tennis racket, rather than the spade and plow on the prairie?
Will he now lead them from the breakers of Newport as well as once he led them from Plymouth Rock?
Will he lead them from the exclusive club as once he led them into the inclusive home?
These were the doubts which filled my mind, but which I did not share with my guests as I guided them; for we were to spend the evening together, and one needs all one’s faith in New York at night.
We spent the early evening hours travelling around the world. We went to Arabia, where dusky children from the desert play in the gutters of Bleecker Street; to Greece, where Spartan and Athenian youth dream of the golden days of Pericles; to China, with its joss-house, its faint odors of sandalwood, and its stronger odors wafted from the Bowery. We visited Russia, and saw its ghetto-dwellers more numerous than Abraham ever thought his progeny would become; we spent some time in Hungary, with its Gulyas and Czardas. We went to Bohemia, with its Narodni Dom; to Italy, south and north, with its strings of garlic, its festoons of sausages, its hurdy-gurdy, and its rich harvest of children. We had glimpses of France, of its table d’hôte and painted women; travelled through darkest Africa, touched upon India, and then were back again upon Broadway.