There was music at night, there was music in the morning. The people sang and danced. The village lake, over which the setting sun loved to linger, gave onto a little stream, hardly more than a brook. The tiny brook sang on its journey, and the rivulets danced on to the Desna; from there into the Sozh on its way to Gomel, down the Dnieper past the ancient city of Kiev, en route to the Black Sea. And in all the towns and villages it passed, I knew the people were singing and dancing. This was something I sensed rather than knew. It was this background of music and dance that was uppermost in my thoughts as I left Russia to make my way, confused and uncertain as to ambition and direction. Despite the impact of the sumptuousness of the bright new world that greeted me on my arrival in America, I found a people who neither sang nor danced. (I am not referring to the melodies of Tin-Pan Alley or the turkey-trot.) I could not understand it. I was dismayed by it. I was filled with a determination to help bring music and dance into their lives; to make these things an important part of their very existence. The story of the transition to America has been told. The transition was motivated primarily by an overwhelming desire for freedom. In 1904 I heard Maxim Gorky speak. Although it was six months later before I knew who Maxim Gorky was, I have never forgotten what he said. Yet, moved as I was by Gorky’s flaming utterance, it was Benjamin Franklin who became my ideal. It was some time during Russia’s fateful year of 1905 that, somehow, a translation of _Poor Richard’s Almanack_ fell into my hands. Franklin’s ideas of freedom to me symbolized America. There, I knew, was a freedom, a liberty of spirit that could not be equalled. Although I arrived at Castle Garden, New York, after a twenty-three day voyage, in May, 1906, it was the fact that Philadelphia was the home of Benjamin Franklin that drew me to that city to make it my first American abiding place. The evidence of these boyhood dreams of America has been proved by my own experience. My dream has become a reality. 2. The Swan It was The Swan who determined my career in dance and ballet management. Whatever my confused aspirations on arriving in America, the music and dance I had imbibed at the folk fonts of Pogar remained with me. I have told the story of the gradual clarification of those aspirations in the tale of the march forward from Brooklyn’s Brownsville. The story of Music for the Masses has become a part of the musical history of America. I had two obsessions: music and dance. Music for the Masses had become a reality. “The Hurok Audience,” as _The Morning Telegraph_ frequently called it, was the public to which, two decades later, _The New York Times_ paid homage by asserting I had done more for music than the phonograph.