And pu’d the gowans fine,
But we’ve wander’d monie a weary foot
Sin’ auld lang syne.
“We twa hae paidl’d in the burn
From morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.”
There is due other surrender: there is the suffering of adjustment in a new country. The first year I spent in Boston, from July, 1871, to considerably more than July, 1872, I conceived my condition to be as near that of the spirits in hell as anything I could well imagine! To be in a city where nobody knew you, where you knew nobody, where so many wanted to take advantage of the “greenhorn,” to laugh at him if he ever grew for a moment a bit sentimental, was not exactly heaven. Many and many a time I went down to the wharf to see the ships with their white sails, written all over with invisible tidings from the far, sunny islands left behind, and if I had not been restrained by shame and pride I should have gone home. That is the experience of Scandinavian, English, Scotch, Irish, Teuton, Slav, Armenian, Syrian, and Latin; the great bereavement of nature and of early humanity is deepened by the sorrow of readjustment in a foreign land. “With a great sum obtained we this citizenship”; few understand it, few indeed. Foreign-born American citizenship is preceded by a vast sacrifice, and you never can understand that sort of citizenship till you take account of this really profound experience.
2. The next thing in the experience of the chief captain was his privilege as a Roman citizen. His station and bearing and power told of that privilege. He was a military tribune in the legion stationed in Jerusalem; he had risen to important command and power impossible for him, inaccessible to him if he had not obtained citizenship.
America has been called the land of opportunity. Look at this fact in three directions only, since time will not allow more. The common workman may become, by intelligence, by diligence and by fidelity, the master workman. Cast your eyes over the land to-day and assemble the master workmen, and you will find that the vast majority of them have risen from the position of ordinary workmen to the chief places in their trade and calling. Such a chance for ascension in a broad way for all competent men, in the Old World, is a simple impossibility. The chance does not exist there. Men rise there by talent and by luck, by talent and by favoritism. But here in a broad and magnificent manner they rise by talent and industry, fidelity and force; here as nowhere else, they have a chance to work out what is in them.