Corkery secured the contract. I picked one hundred men. The morning we began I held a sort of convention. "Men," I said, "I've promised to do this in so many days. They say we can't do it. If we don't, here's where they laugh at the gang." We did it. I never heard from Corkery about it but when we were through I thanked the gang and I found them more truly mine than they had ever been before. Every Saturday night I brought home my fifteen dollars, and Ruth took out three for the rent, five for household expenses, and put seven in the ginger jar. We had one hundred and thirty dollars in the bank before the raise came, and after this it increased rapidly. There wasn't a week we didn't put aside seven dollars, and sometimes eight. The end of my first year as an emigrant found me with the following items to my credit: Ruth, the boy and myself in better health than we had ever been; Ruth's big mother-love finding outlet in the neighborhood; the boy alert and ambitious; myself with the beginning of a good technical education, to say nothing of the rudiments of a new language, with a loyal gang of one hundred men and two hundred dollars in cash. This inventory does not take into account my new friends, my new mental and spiritual outlook upon life, or my enhanced self-respect. Such things cannot be calculated. That first year was, of course, the important year--the big year. It proved what could be done, and nothing remained now but time in which to do it. It established the evident fact that if a raw, uneducated foreigner can come to this country and succeed, a native-born with experience plus intelligence ought to do the same thing more rapidly. But it had taught me that what the native-born must do is to simplify his standard of living, take advantage of the same opportunities, toil with the same spirit, and free himself from the burdensome bonds of caste. The advantage is all with the pioneer, the adventurer, the emigrant. These are the real children of the republic--here in the East, at any rate. Every landing dock is Plymouth Rock to them. They are the real forefathers of the coming century, because they possess all the rugged strength of settlers. They are making their own colonial history. CHAPTER XVI DICK FINDS A WAY OUT, TOO When school closed in June, Dick came to me and said: "Dad, I don't want to loaf all summer." "No need of it," I said. "Take another course in the summer school." "I want to earn some money," he said, "I want to go to work."