The Making of an American | Page 2

the Whyo Gang
The Mulberry Bend as it is
My Little Ones gathering Daisies for "the Poors"
Mr. Lowell's Letter
The Boys' "Playground" in an Old-time School
Typical East Side Tenement Block (five hundred babies in it, not one
bath-tub)

President Theodore Roosevelt, of the Police Board
"One was sitting asleep on a butter-tub"
Chief of Police Thomas Byrnes
The Mott Street Barracks
Gotham Court
A Tenement House Air-shaft
The School of the New Day
The Way to prevent the Manufacture of "Toughs"
Ribe, in my Childhood (seen from Elisabeths Garden)
At Home in the Old Town (the last time we were all together)
"The 'gossip benches' are filled"
The Extinct Chimney-sweep
The Ancient Bellwoman
The Village Express
Holy Andrew's Cross
Sir Asker Ryg's Church at Fjennesloevlille
"Horse-meat to-day!"
The Cross of Dannebrog
After Twenty-five Years
King Christian as I saw him last

The Jacob A. Riis House (No. 50 Henry Street, New York)
Christmas Eve with the King's Daughters
James Tanner
"The little ones from Cherry Street"
My Silver Bride
Here comes the Baby!
"That minute I knew"
CHAPTER I
THE MEETING ON THE LONG BRIDGE

[Illustration: Our Stork]
On the outskirts of the ancient town of Ribe, on the Danish north
seacoast, a wooden bridge spanned the Nibs River when I was a boy--a
frail structure, with twin arches like the humps of a dromedary, for
boats to go under. Upon it my story begins. The bridge is long since
gone. The grass-grown lane that knew our romping feet leads nowhere
now. But in my memory it is all as it was that day nearly forty years
ago, and it is always summer there. The bees are droning among the
forget-me-nots that grow along shore, and the swans arch their necks in
the limpid stream. The clatter of the mill-wheel down at the dam comes
up with drowsy hum; the sweet smells of meadow and field are in the
air. On the bridge a boy and a girl have met.
He whistles a tune, boy-fashion, with worsted jacket slung across his
arm, on his way home from the carpenter shop to his midday meal.
When she has passed he stands looking after her, all the music gone out
of him. At the other end of the bridge she turns with the feeling that he
is looking, and, when she sees that he is, goes on with a little toss of her

pretty head. As she stands one brief moment there with the roguish
look, she is to stand in his heart forever--a sweet girlish figure, in jacket
of gray, black-embroidered, with schoolbooks and pretty bronzed
boots--
"With tassels!" says my wife, maliciously--she has been looking over
my shoulder. Well, with tassels! What then? Did I not worship a pair of
boots with tassels which I passed in a shop window in Copenhagen
every day for a whole year, because they were the only other pair I ever
saw? I don't know--there may have been more; perhaps others wore
them. I know she did. Curls she had, too--curls of yellow gold. Why do
girls not have curls these days? It is such a rare thing to see them, that
when you do you feel like walking behind them miles and miles just to
feast your eyes. Too much bother, says my daughter. Bother? Why, I
have carried one of your mother's, miss! all these--there, I shall not say
how long--and carry it still. Bother? Great Scott!
[Illustration: The Meeting on the Long Bridge.]
And is this going to be a love story, then? Well, I have turned it over
and over, and looked at it from every angle, but if I am to tell the truth,
as I promised, I don't see how it can be helped. If I am to do that, I must
begin at the Long Bridge. I stepped on it that day a boy, and came off it
with the fixed purpose of a man. How I stuck to it is part of the
story--the best part, to my thinking; and I ought to know, seeing that
our silver wedding comes this March. Silver wedding, humph! She isn't
a week older than the day I married her--not a week. It was all in the
way of her that I came here; though at the time I am speaking of I
rather guessed than knew it was Elizabeth. She lived over there beyond
the bridge. We had been children together. I suppose I had seen her a
thousand times before without noticing. In school I had heard the boys
trading in her for marbles and brass buttons as a partner at dances and
games--generally trading off the other girls for her. She was such a
pretty dancer! I was not. "Soldiers and robbers" was more to my taste.