I wished to believe that I was no longer a greenhorn, and I certainly did not wish to listen to opinions of a greenhorn such as were the opinions of Bilharz in matters outside of Greek and Roman history and of the civilization which it described. His eyes were continually turned to a sunset the glory of which had faded long ago; my eyes watched just as eagerly for the daily sunrise as they did on the pasturelands of my native village, and each sunrise showed me something new in this—to me—still unknown land. He contemplated the past, and I explored the present and dreamed about the future. I thought of Jim’s prophecy which said that some day I should outgrow the opportunities of Cortlandt Street, and I felt confident that the day had arrived. My mind was made up to search for new opportunities, but Jim, and Bilharz also, in spite of his shortcomings, were still a great attraction, and I moved slowly.
One day, after leaving Cooper Union library, I walked along the upper Bowery, refreshing my memories of the hard winter of 1874–1875. In Broome Street near the Bowery I saw a store with a sign bearing the name of Lukanitch. The man of that name must be a Serb, thought I, and I walked in, longing to hear the language which I had not heard for over three years. It was a hardware store dealing principally in files and tools made of hardened steel. Behind the desk stood an elderly man, and he, much surprised, answered my Serbian greeting in the Serbian language with an accent reminding me of Kos, my Slovene teacher in Panchevo. Lukanitch told me that he was a Slovene and that in his young days he was a pedler, a Kranyats, as they called the Slovenian pedlers in my native village. His annual summer tours took him to my native Banat. A Kranyats travels on foot hundreds of miles, carrying on his back a huge case with numerous small drawers, each drawer containing a different line of goods: pins, needles, and threads; pens and pencils, cheap jewelry and gaily colored handkerchiefs; cotton, linen, silk, and all kinds of things which the peasants are apt to buy. A Kranyats was a familiar sight in my native village, and he was always welcome there, because he was a Slovene, a near kin to the Serb; and the Serb peasants of the Banat plains loved to hear a Kranyats describe the beauties of the mountainsides of little Slovenia on the eastern slope of the Dolomites. When I disclosed my name to Lukanitch he asked me for my father’s name, and when I told him that it was Constantine and that he lived in Idvor, Banat, his eyes looked like two scintillating stars. He gave me a big hug and a big tear threatened to roll down his cheek when he said: “Ko che ko Bog?” (Who can fathom the will of God?) After relating to me that my father had befriended him nearly thirty years prior to that time and that he had often stayed as guest at my father’s house whenever his annual tours as Kranyats took him through Idvor, he begged me to come to his house on the following Sunday and dine with his family. I did, and there I met his good wife, a fine Slavonic type, and also his son and daughter, who were born in this country and who looked like young Slavs with Americanism grafted upon them. His son was about to graduate from a high school, and his daughter was preparing for Normal College. They were both American in manner and sentiment, but father and mother, although deeply devoted to the United States, the native country of their children, were still sincerely attached to the beautiful customs of the Slovene land. The children preferred to speak English, but they delighted in Slovene music, which they cultivated with much enthusiasm. That made their parents most happy. Their home was a beautiful combination of American and Slovene civilization. Once they invited me to an anniversary party and I found the whole family dressed in most picturesque Slovenian costumes; but everybody in the party, including even old Lukanitch and his wife and all the Slovenian guests, spoke English. Most of the guests were Americans, but they enjoyed the Slovenian dishes and the Slovenian music, singing, and dancing as much as anybody. To my great surprise the American girls, friends of Miss Lukanitch, played Slovenian music exceedingly well, and I thought to myself that a sufficiently frequent repetition of parties of that kind would soon transform the American population in the vicinity of Prince Street into Slovenians. This interaction between two very different civilizations gave me food for thought, which I am still digesting mentally.
Lukanitch and his family became my devoted friends, and they were just as interested in my plans and aspirations as if I had been a member of their family. The old lady had a tender heart, and she shed many a tear listening to bits of my history from the time when I bade good-by to father and mother at the steamboat landing on the Danube, five years before. The disappearance of my roast goose at Karlovci, my first railroad ride from Budapest to Vienna, my dialogues with the train conductor and the gaudy station-master at Vienna, and my free ride in a first-class compartment from Vienna to Prague in company with American friends amused her and her husband hugely. I had to repeat the story many a time for the benefit of her Slovenian friends. She begged me repeatedly to tell the story of my crossing of the Atlantic and of my hardships as greenhorn, being evidently anxious to have her children hear it. I did it several times, scoring much success on each occasion, and as a reward she loaded me with many little gifts and with many enjoyable feasts on Sundays and holidays. My interpretation of the American theory of freedom, which I had derived from reading the lives and the utterances of the great men who made this country and from my three years’ struggles as greenhorn, found a most appreciative audience in the Lukanitch family. They applauded Jim’s sentiment, that this country is a monument to the great men who made it, and not to a single family like the Hapsburgs of Austria-Hungary. Old Lukanitch offered to engage me as his teacher in American history, and young Lukanitch offered to get me an invitation from the principal of his high school to deliver an oration on the Declaration of Independence. The offers were not meant very seriously, but there was enough sincerity in them to make me believe that my training in America was recognized as having substantial value by people whose opinion deserved respect. I saw in it the first real recognition referred to in the prophecy of my fellow passenger on the immigrant ship who said: “No matter who you are or what you know or what you have, you will be a greenhorn when you land in the New World, and a greenhorn has to serve his apprenticeship as greenhorn before he can establish his claim to any recognition.” I said to myself: “Here is my first recognition small as it may be, and I am certainly no longer a greenhorn.”
No longer a greenhorn! Oh, what a confidence that gives to a foreign-born youth who has experienced the hardships of serving his apprenticeship as a greenhorn! Then there were other sources of confidence: I had a goodly deposit in the Union Dime Savings Bank and it was several thousand times as big as the nickel which I brought to Castle Garden when I landed. Besides, I had learned a thing or two in the evening classes at Cooper Union, and my English was considered good not only in vocabulary and grammar, but also in articulation, thanks to Bilharz. Young Lukanitch assured me that my knowledge of English, mathematics, and science would easily take me into college. He even prophesied a most successful college career, pointing at my big chest and broad shoulders and feeling my hard biceps. “You will make a splendid college oarsman,” said he, “and they will do anything for you at Columbia if you are a good oarsman, even if you do not get from Bilharz so very much Greek or Latin.” At that time Columbia stood very high in rowing. One of her crews won in the Henley Regatta, and its picture could be seen in every illustrated paper. I had seen it many a time and remembered the looks of every member of that famous crew. Young Lukanitch was so enthusiastic about it that he would have gone to Columbia himself if his father had not needed him so much in his steel-tool business. He did his best to turn my eyes from Nassau Hall to Columbia. He succeeded, but not so much on account of my prospects in rowing as on account of other things, and among them was the official name of that institution: “Columbia College in the City of New York.” The fact that the college was located in the city of New York carried much weight, because New York appealed to my imagination more than any other place in the world. The impression which it made upon my mind as the immigrant ship moved into New York Harbor on that clear and sunny March day when I first passed through Castle Garden, the Gate of America, never faded. My first victory on American soil was won in New York when I fought for my right to wear the red fez.
IV
FROM GREENHORN TO CITIZENSHIP AND COLLEGE DEGREE
The Columbia boat-race victory at Henley occurred in 1878. By that time I had already with the assistance of Bilharz finished a considerable portion of my Greek and Latin preparation for Princeton—or, as I called it, for “Nassau Hall.” My change of allegiance from Princeton to Columbia was gradual.
Columbia College was located at that time on the block between Madison and Park Avenues and between Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Streets in New York City. One of its proposed new buildings was, according to report, to be called Hamilton Hall, in honor of Alexander Hamilton. When I learned this I looked up the history of Alexander Hamilton. One can imagine how thrilled I was when I found that Hamilton left the junior class at Columbia College and joined Washington’s armies as captain when he was barely nineteen, and at twenty was lieutenant-colonel and Washington’s aide-de-camp! What an appeal to a young imagination! Few things ever thrilled me as much as the life of Alexander Hamilton. Every American youth preparing for college should read the history of Hamilton’s life.
One cannot look up the history of Hamilton’s life without running across the name of another great Columbia man, John Jay, first Secretary of Foreign Affairs, appointed by Congress, and the first Chief Justice of the United States, appointed by Washington, and a stanch backer of brilliant Hamilton. Chancellor Livingston, another great Columbia man, administered the first constitutional oath of office to Washington; he also completed the purchase of Louisiana from France. The more I studied the history of Hamilton’s time the more I saw what tremendous influence Columbia’s alumni exerted at that time. Cortlandt Street being near Trinity Church, I walked there to look at the Hamilton monument in the Trinity churchyard. This monument was the first suggestion to me of a bond of union between Trinity Church and Columbia College. Before long I found many other bonds of union between these two great institutions.
Every time I passed Columbia College in my long walks up-town and looked at the rising structure of Hamilton Hall, I thought of these three great Columbia men. What student of Hamilton’s life could have looked at Hamilton Hall on Madison Avenue without being reminded of the magnificent intellectual efforts which two young patriots, Hamilton and Madison, made in the defense of the federalist form of the new American Republic? It happened thus that my memory of Nassau Hall at Princeton gradually faded, although it never vanished. The famous boat-race victory of a Columbia crew at Henley would not alone have produced this effect. It was produced by three great New York men of the Revolutionary period who were alumni of “Columbia College in the City of New York.” Columbia had at that time a school of mines and engineering, separate from the college. I was much better prepared for it than for Columbia College, thanks to the evening lectures at Cooper Union, and to my natural inclination to scientific studies, but I imagined that the spirit of Hamilton, Jay, and Livingston hovered about the academic buildings of Columbia College only.