twenty years at hull house

something as familiar and natural to the aged and dying as life is to the

young and living? Through all the drive and indeed throughout the

night these thoughts were pierced by sharp worry, a sense of faithless'

ness because I had forgotten the text Polly had confided to me long

before as the one from which she wished her funeral sermon to he

preached. My comfort as usual finally came from my father, who

pointed out what was essential and what was of little avail even in such

a moment as this, and while he was much too wise to grow dogmatic

upon the great theme of death, I felt a new fellowship with him because we had discussed it together.

Perhaps I may record here my protest against the efforts, so often

made, to shield children and young people from all that has to do with

death and sorrow, to give them a good time at all hazards on the as'

sumption that the ills of life will come soon enough. Young people

themselves often resent this attitude on the part of their elders; they

feel set aside and belittled as if they were denied the common human

experiences. They too wish to climb steep stairs and to eat their bread

with tears, and they imagine that the problems of existence which so

press upon them in pensive moments would be less insoluble in the

light of these great happenings.

An incident which stands out clearly in my mind as an exciting sug'

gestion of the great world of moral enterprise and serious undertakings

must have occurred earlier than this, for in 1872 , when I was not yet

twelve years old, I came into my father's room one morning to find him sitting beside the fire with a newspaper in his hand, looking very

solemn; and upon my eager inquiry what had happened, he told me

that Joseph Mazzini was dead. I had never even heard Mazzini's name,

and after being told about him I was inclined to grow argumentative,

asserting that my father did not know him, that he was not an Amer'

ican, and that I could not understand why we should be expected to

feel badly about him. It is impossible to recall the conversation with

the complete breakdown of my cheap arguments, but in the end I ob'

tained that which I have ever regarded as a valuable possession, a sense

of the genuine relationship which may exist between men who share

large hopes and like desires, even though they differ in nationality,

language, and creed; that those things count for absolutely nothing between groups of men who are trying to abolish slavery in America or to

throw off Hapsburg oppression in Italy. At any rate, I was heartily