"For instance," he said, "I am part German, part revolutionary Yankee stock" (it seemed to me that he put the emphasis upon the revolutionary), "part French, part Scandinavian, part Irish." I have forgotten just how many racial strains he said were running in his veins, but a variety large enough to be exceedingly useful to him in claiming kinship with all sorts of folk, and in making political speeches. That the ancestors of the average American belong to the great fighting stocks of humanity may explain if not excuse his love for physical combat. Each guest around the table followed the editor's example and accounted for his ancestry, showing that all but two of the Americans were mixtures, ranging from three to eight more or less greatly differentiated races, using that term in its broadest sense. One of these unmixed Americans gave the outlines of his family tree, all of it growing out of the rugged New England soil; but every one of his daughters had married a man of foreign birth, or of foreign parentage. His sons-in-law are German, Polish, French and Jewish. He added: "My German and French sons-in-law are great chums." The other pure American was myself, although of course my ancestors did not come over in the _Mayflower_, and I have never been in New England long enough for my family tree to take root in its historic soil. After all, though, the best thing a nation or race has to bequeath to its children is not always handed down upon the racial channel. I think it is the Apostle Paul who discovered this long ago, and his missionary propaganda among the Gentiles is based upon his belief that they are not all Israelites who are of the circumcision. His converts became Israelites through adoption, through their appreciation of the Jewish Spirit which came to its full fruitage in Jesus of Nazareth. I once heard Max Nordeau say: "_Es gibt zweierlei Juden: auch Juden und Bauch Juden;_" which freely translated means: "There are two kinds of Jews: those of the spirit and those of the stomach." The taste for _Kosher Wurst_ and _Gefülte Brust_ is inheritable to the tenth generation; but one is not always born with the passion for righteousness, the love of justice and the thirst for God. To these one must rather be born again, and the same thing is true of the American. There are Americans who have thrown overboard their spiritual inheritance, who have expatriated themselves because they could not live in the Puritan atmosphere of New England; but to whom a Sunday in the _Riviera_ is not fully radiant, unless upon the rose-laden atmosphere there comes wafted the fragrance of codfish balls. The Herr Director reminded the company of the fact that I was the most "_Unausstehlicher Americaner_" he had ever met; to which the editor responded that he knew one who was if anything worse than myself--a newspaper man, Jacob Riis.