It is strange and yet natural, no doubt, that I remember the trivial incidents of that first landing. The attempt on the part of some of my Slovaks to eat bananas without removing the skins; their first acquaintance with mince pie, which they declared a barbarous dish; our first meal on American soil, in a third rate boarding-house for immigrants, and the injunction of one of the earlier comers: "Don't wait for anybody, but grab all you can. In this country the motto is: 'Happy is the man who can help himself!'" I remember the lonely feeling that crept over us as we found ourselves like driftwood in the great current of humanity in the city of New York, and the fear we had of every one who was at all friendly; for we had been warned against sharpers. I remember our pleasure in the picturesque ferry-boat which carried us to New Jersey, its walking-beam seeming like the limbs of some great monster crossing the water. Then crowding fast upon one another come memories of hard tasks in gruesome mines and ghostly breakers; the sight of licking flames like fiery tongues darting out at us, from furnaces full of bubbling, boiling metal; the circling camps of the coke burners who kept their night's vigil by the altars of the Fire God. There are memories of dark ravines and mud banks, choked by refuse of mill and mine; the miners' huts, close together, as if space were as scarce on the earth as compassion for the stranger. I remember the kindness of the poor, the hospitality of the crowded, the hostility of the richer and stronger, who feared that we would drive them from their diggings; and the unbelief of those to whom I early began preaching the humanity of the Slav--rough and uncouth, but human still, although he has scarcely ever had a fair chance to prove it. Of the names of the various towns through which I passed, in which I worked and watched, I particularly remember four: Connelsville, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and Streator, Ill., all of them typical coal towns. In none of them were my people received with open arms, although they rarely met with organized hostility. In Scranton and in Streator, they still remember our coming and our staying. Since then, I have repeatedly visited all these four places upon errands of investigation and interpretation. I always dreaded going back to them; not only because it would revive painful memories of a very hard apprenticeship, but because I could not avoid asking myself if the optimism with which I have treated the problem of immigration, by voice and pen, would be justified. What if the Americans in these cities should say: "We have lived with these Slavs for twenty-five years and more; we have been with them day after day, while you have flitted about the country. We know better than you do. We told you the 'Hunkey' was a menace when he came, and he is a menace still."