twenty years at hull house

enthusiasm Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship,'' but on the evening

of "Old Settlers' Day,'' to my surprise, I found it difficult to go on. Its

sonorous sentences and exaltation of the man who "can'' suddenly

ceased to he convincing. I had already written down in my commonplace book a resolution to give at least twenty-five copies of this hook

each year to noble young people of my acquaintance. It is perhaps fitting to record in this chapter that the very first Christmas we spent at

Hull-House, in spite of exigent demands upon my slender purse for

candy and shoes, I gave to a club of boys twenty-five copies of the then

new Carl Schurz's "Appreciation of Abraham Lincoln.''

In our early effort at Hull- House to hand on to our neighbors whatever of help we had found for ourselves, we made much of Lincoln. We

were often distressed by the children of immigrant parents who were

ashamed of the pit whence they were digged, who repudiated the language and customs of their elders, and counted themselves successful

as they were able to ignore the past. Whenever I held up Lincoln for

their admiration as the greatest American, I invariably pointed out his

marvelous power to retain and utilize past experiences; that he never

forgot how the plain people in Sangamon County thought and felt

when he himself had moved to town; that this habit was the foundation for his marvelous capacity for growth; that during those distracting years in Washington it enabled him to make clear beyond denial to

the American people themselves, the goal towards which they were

moving. I was sometimes bold enough to add that proficiency in the

art of recognition and comprehension did not come without effort,

and that certainly its attainment was necessary for any successful career in our conglomerate America.

An instance of the invigorating and clarifying power of Lincoln's influence came to me many years ago in England. I had spent two days in

Oxford under the guidance of Arnold Toynbee's old friend Sidney Ball *of St. John's College, who was closely associated with that group of

scholars we all identify with the beginnings of the Settlement movement. It was easy to claim the philosophy of Thomas Hill Green, the *road-building episode of Ruskin, the experimental living in the East *End by Frederick Maurice, the London Workingmen's College of Edward Dennison, as foundations laid by university men for the establishment of Toynbee Hall. I was naturally much interested in the

beginnings of a movement whose slogan was "Back to the People," and