Chicago offers great opportunity to a student of religious, industrial and social conditions, and when, by chance, I secured employment in a leading warehouse, a very good paying position, under the circumstances, I devoted all my spare time visiting the Greek quarters, incognito, and studying everything that came within my observation, and attending all kinds of public meetings of various denominations and societies, which proved a great help to me in learning the proper pronunciation of the English words, in fact for five years I did not speak five times in the Greek language. One morning I read in the paper the following announcement: "The Knights Templar of the United States have made their plans to celebrate the 29th triennial conclave of Knights Templar to be held in San Francisco, Cal., September 4 to 9. The occasion will be of universal character, representatives from all the world; and Great Britain will send to this imposing ceremony the highest officials that control the affairs of the chivalric order of Freemasonry in the British Isles. The Earl of Euston, most eminent and supreme grand master of great priory of England and Wales and the dependencies of the British crown, were coming with credentials to represent Edward VII, the king of England." I was looking forward to my visit to California, since I left New York, but I never expected the time for me to go there would come so soon as it did. I was longing to see a great gathering of Freemasons, of this class of men, that, in every country represents the highest ideals of good citizenship. With a few days preliminary preparations, I bade good-bye to my employer, and well supplied with recommendations from some influential friends and acquaintances which I had made in Chicago, I saw myself off to California, on the forenoon train, the 25th of June, 1904. The trip was uneventful, excepting the unbearable heat and dust, especially going through the States of Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico, and the number of Indians, which, for the first time in my life I beheld in their own skin living and moving contented as though they still were the dominating race on the continent, with their square faces painted in various colors, wrapped in their blankets, and bare-footed, their feet being very much like those of a mud turtle, they were the real thing. CHAPTER VIII _Honorable Submission_