He came and put out his hand to me, round Joseph. "My friend," he says, "I vill tell you what it is. Thes' is what I thought America was like."
Wasn't that queer, when I understood all he had hoped from America, and all he hadn't found? A lump come in my throat—not a sad one though! But a glad one. And oh, the difference in them lumps!
He went back to work at his toys again, and he began at the bottom, a whole year after his first coming, to save up money to bring over his wife and the little ones. And it wasn't two weeks later that I went there one night and saw him out working on the hole in the road again.
"I work for you this time, though," he said, when he see I noticed. "Thes' I do not for America—no! I do it for you and for thes' village. No one else."
And I thought, while I watched him pounding away at the dirt:
"Anybody might think Friendship Village knows things America hasn't found out yet—but of course that can't be so."
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Copyright, Everybody's Magazine, 1915.