He replied: “My child, don’t you knows that I gets paid for being secretary, and gets nothing for being president?”
Upon which, this child of the Ghetto faced her father half angrily, crying: “Why, papa, don’t you know that honour is more than money?”
We left the tenement house together and walked across to Broadway, all along that gaily lighted thoroughfare, illy named the White Way. Theatres and concert halls were being emptied, and we were jostled by the crowds. My friend spoke never a word until we reached the marble steps of his home. Then, pressing my hand, he said, with almost a tenderness in his voice: “Honour is more than money.”
XXI
FROM LAKE SKUTARI TO LAKE CHAUTAUQUA
WHEN I told a group of friends that I was to speak to the Albanians of Jamestown, N.Y., one of them, who knew both her history and her geography uncommonly well, said, questioningly: “Albanians? Are those the people with white hair and pink eyes?” Then, realizing that Albinos and Albanians are not identical, and being genuine enough not to conceal her ignorance, she asked: “Do you mean the people from Albany, N.Y.?”
She may be pardoned for not knowing who the Albanians are, although they are one of the oldest European peoples, who have kept a corner of that continent turbulent, in the attempt to wrest from their master, the Turk, the right of political existence.
One cannot say that the Balkan would have been a peaceful nook had it not been for these Ghegs and Tosks, as the two main divisions of the Albanians are called; but certainly, the history of Turk, Greek and Southern Slav would have been different had it not been for the Albanians’ clinging tenaciously to ancient rights, and their many struggles against continuous oppression.
