At this point I became conscious that the attention of the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin had flagged; for their response to my homily was an eloquent tribute to the tenderness of the breast of a Long Island duck, which they had been enjoying while I talked. As they were consequently in a lenient mood towards the whole world and therefore the United States, I renewed my laudable and difficult effort, and, as is often best, through the medium of a story. At the time the elective system was introduced into Harvard University, attendance upon chapel was made voluntary. "I understand," said a severe critic of this procedure, "that you have made God elective in your college." "No," replied the astute president, "I understand that God has made Himself elective everywhere." The point of my story was lost upon both my guests. When I paused, the Frau Directorin asked me how it was possible to serve so lavish a bill of fare for so little money, and the Herr Director asked the waiter why they called this a Long Island duck when the portions were so short. Thus the conviction was forced upon me that our environment was not conducive to the discussion of the American Spirit and that I must await a more auspicious occasion. Late in the afternoon that occasion came; not on Fifth Avenue but on one of those streets where churches are fewest and humanity thickest; where Sunday brings liberation from toil, where cleanliness and godliness have an equally difficult task in coming or abiding; where nations and races must mingle and cannot easily blend, where the America which is to be is in the making, and where the Spirit must manifest itself if we are to be a nation with common ideals. I like to take my friends to the East Side of New York City. I glory in its self-respect, its brave struggle against poverty and disease, its bright children filling all the available space and asserting their childhood by playing in the busy street, defying its noisy traffic. They make of each hurdy-gurdy the center of a great festival, dancing as the elves are said to dance, because it is their nature to. I like to point out the faces of Patriarchs, Prophets and Madonnas--faces seamed by care and sorrow, yet lighted by a divine radiance and as unconscious of it as were those upon whom it shone in such fullness on that great East Side of the Universe which we now call the Holy Land. I like to have my friends meet my East Side friends, the young working girls, who dress in good taste, help support a family, and maintain an unstained character in spite of small wages and the temptations of a great city. I like them to meet the growing boys who are hungry for the best the city holds, and who dream the dream of making the East Side in particular, and New York in general, a better place in which to live.