But it is no such desperate hope that the cities we have seen spring from French fort and portage keep in their hearts. It is not even a confession that one would have to make to-day in the American cities which Whitman had in mind in his gloomy, foreboding vision. I have seen on the streets of one of the Whitman cities [Footnote: New York City.] those same grotesques, malformations, and meaningless antics, that flippancy and vulgarity and cunning, that foppishness and premature ripeness, that painted, bad-complexioned, bad-mannered, shallow-beautied humanity; but touching, as I have had opportunity to touch, three of the great agencies of its aspirations--its philanthropies, its literature, and its schools--I know that no body of five million people, whether huddled in tenements or scattered over plain and mountain and along rivers and seas, has with more serious or sacrificing purpose aspired, though constantly disturbed in its prayers, its operations, by people of every tongue, nearly a million strong, who are emptied at her port every year from Europe and Asia, besides the hundreds of thousands who come up from the country. There are public schools, for example, in certain parts of that city where there is not a child of American parentage. There is one, in particular, which I visit frequently and which I call the "oasis" in the desert of humanity (Walt Whitman's Sahara), where two or three thousand children are gathered, literally from the plains of Russia, the valleys of Italy, and other parts of Europe--for these were their ancestral homes, though they come immediately from the swarming streets and dimly lighted, ill-smelling tenements of New York--and there, aspiring under the hopeful teaching of the city, I have heard them, boys and girls together, sing, with all the joy and cleanliness of shepherd children, of a leading in green pastures and by still waters. But to come back to the cities in the valley of Nouvelle France, there is no note of else than hope there. Mistakes, disappointments, crudities, infidelities? Yes, but the mistakes, disappointments, crudities, failures of youth--youth of strong passions and love of play but of a masterful will that a generous nature has so much encouraged and aided as to obscure its limitations. A few rods from the Carnegie Library and Museum of Art and Concert Hall in Pittsburgh is a baseball field, where a million people or more come in the course of the season to see trained men play an out-of-door game (and if it chanced that the President of the United States were visiting the city, he might be seen there accompanied by his secretary of state or the president of a great university). In Chicago I found the whole city, young and old, united in its interest in the results of the "game" of the day before or the prospects of the next. When games are played for the great championship pennant the city virtually takes a holiday.