THE MAKING O^ AN AMERICAN 73 



experience he proposed to Orr to leave this "un- 

 worthy country/'^ he was showing that not yet 

 had he become thoroughly American in feeling, 

 but even then the change was taking place. By 

 friendships and courtesies, through perils by land 

 and water, in common dangers and common in- 

 terests, slowly, surely, unfailingly, his character 

 was being fused in the crucible of life until it be- 

 came as distinctly American as that of the best 

 native-born man with whom he worked and lived. 

 The love of his own native land was never to 

 fail utterly nor grow dim, but it became second to 

 that which he felt to this land where at last his 

 dreams began to fade into reality. It was for the 

 love of this new country of his that he began his 

 journey and endured his hardships, and now at 

 length he began to see, as so many others have 

 seen, that by following where love had first led 

 him he might come to receive what had before 

 been denied him, the fulfilment of his dreams of 

 fame. As truly representative of the Scotland of 

 his day as he had been, he became no less repre- 

 sentative now of the America in which he lived. 

 A republican of the most enthusiastic order, fa- 

 miliar with American men and forests, and cities, 

 from Maine to Florida, a political speaker at 

 times, and a writer of political verse, the man had 

 become an American indeed when he could say in 

 a letter to his father that he would "willingly give 

 a hundred dollars" — a big sum with him just then 

 — "if he could spend a few days in Paisley," but 

 that he "would again wing his way across the 

 western waste of water, to the peaceful and happv 

 regions of America." 



