Part 41 (1/2)

”Yes, it is true,” answered the Maestro. ”No school for a long, long time.”

Then Isidro's mouth began to twitch queerly, and suddenly throwing himself full-length upon the floor, he hurled out from somewhere within him a long, tremulous wail.

JAMES MERLE HOPPER

James Merle Hopper was born in Paris, France. His father was American, his mother French; their son James was born July 23, 1876. In 1887 his parents came to America, and settled in California. James Hopper attended the University of California, graduating in 1898. He is still remembered there as one of the grittiest football players who ever played on the 'Varsity team. Then came a course in the law school of that university, and admission to the California bar in 1900. All this reads like the biography of a lawyer: so did the early life of James Russell Lowell, and of Oliver Wendell Holmes: they were all admitted to the bar, but they did not become lawyers. James Hopper had done some newspaper work for San Francisco papers while he was in law school, and the love of writing had taken hold of him. In the meantime he had married Miss Mattie E. Leonard, and as literature did not yet provide a means of support, he became an instructor in French at the University of California.

With the close of the Spanish-American War came the call for thousands of Americans to go to the Philippines as schoolmasters. This appealed to him, and he spent the years 1902-03 in the work that Kipling thus describes in ”The White Man's Burden”:

To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.

His experiences here furnished the material for a group of short stories dealing picturesquely with the Filipinos in their first contact with American civilization. These were published in _McClure's_, and afterwards collected in book form under the t.i.tle _Caybigan_.

In 1903 James Hopper returned to the United States, and for a time was on the editorial staff of _McClure's_. Later in collaboration with Fred R. Bechdolt he wrote a remarkable book, ent.i.tled ”_9009_”. This is the number of a convict in an American prison, and the book exposes the system of spying, of treachery, of betrayal, that a convict must identify himself with in order to become a ”trusty.” His next book was a college story, _The Freshman_. This was followed by a volume of short stories, _What Happened in the Night_. These are stories of child life, but intended for older readers; they are very successful in reproducing the imaginative world in which children live. In 1915 and 1916 he acted as a war correspondent for _Collier's_, first with the American troops in Mexico in pursuit of Villa, and later in France. His home is at Carmel, California.

THEY WHO BRING DREAMS TO AMERICA

_”No wonder this America of ours is big. We draw the brave ones from the old lands, the brave ones whose dreams are like the guiding sign that was given to the Israelites of old--a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.” ”The Citizen” is a story of a brave man who followed his dream over land and sea, until it brought him to America, a fortunate event for him and for us._

THE CITIZEN

BY

JAMES FRANCIS DWYER

The President of the United States was speaking. His audience comprised two thousand foreign-born men who had just been admitted to citizens.h.i.+p.

They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a new-born patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the first citizen of the country they now claimed as their own.

Here and there among the newly-made citizens were wives and children.

The women were proud of their men. They looked at them from time to time, their faces showing pride and awe.

One little woman, sitting immediately in front of the President, held the hand of a big, muscular man and stroked it softly. The big man was looking at the speaker with great blue eyes that were the eyes of a dreamer.

The President's words came clear and distinct:

_You were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of life. You dreamed dreams of this country, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. A man enriches the country to which he brings dreams, and you who have brought them have enriched America._

The big man made a curious choking noise and his wife breathed a soft ”Hus.h.!.+” The giant was strangely affected.

The President continued:

_No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us, but remember this, if we have grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you at any rate imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. Each of you, I am sure, brought a dream, a glorious, s.h.i.+ning dream, a dream worth more than gold or silver, and that is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome._