WOULD you like to hear about a viking of our own time? Listen to the story of this Northman, and see if you will not say that the North Sea country can still send forth as staunch and fearless men as those who sailed in their dragon ships the “whale roads” of the uncharted seas, found a new world and forgot about it long before Columbus dreamed his dream.

Near the Danish coast where the sea and the low-lying fields grapple hand to hand in every storm, and where the waves at flood tide thunder against the barrows beneath which the old vikings were buried, is the quaint little town of Ribe. This is the sea’s own country. It seems as if the people here, who never fear to go down to the sea in ships, have scorned to pile up dikes between them and their greatest friend, who can, in a moment of anger, prove their greatest enemy. It is as if they said, “We are of the sea; if it chooses to rise up against us, who are we to say, ‘Thus far and no farther!’”

There was a boy born in this town whose name was Jacob Riis. The call of the sea-birds was the first sound he knew; the breath of the sea was like the breath of life to him. On bright, blue-and-gold days when the waves danced in rainbow hues and scattered in snowy foam, his heart “outdid the sparkling waves in glee.” At evening, when the sea-fogs settled down over the shore and land and water seemed one, something of the thoughtful strength and patience of that brave little country came into his face.

Many changes had come to the coast since the sea-rovers of old pulled their pirate galleys on the beach, took down their square, gaily striped sails, and gave themselves over to feasting in the great mead-hall, where the smoking boar’s-flesh was taken from the leaping flames and seized by the flushed, triumphant warriors, while skalds chanted loud the joys of battle and plunder. The quaint little town where Jacob Riis lived sixty-odd years ago had nothing but the broom-covered barrows and the changeless ocean that belonged to those wild times, and yet it was quite as far removed from the customs and interests of to-day.

I wish that I could make you see the narrow cobblestone streets over which whale-oil lanterns swung on creaking iron chains, and the quaint houses with their tiled roofs where the red-legged storks came in April to build their nests. The stillness was unbroken by the snort of the locomotive and the shrill clamor of steam-boat and steam factory whistles. The people still journeyed by stagecoach, carried tinder-boxes in place of matches, and penknives to mend their quill pens. The telegraph was regarded with suspicion, as was the strange oil from Pennsylvania that was taken out of the earth. Such things could not be safe, and prudent people would do well to have none of them.

In this town, where mill-wheels clattered comfortably in the little stream along which roses nodded over old garden walls and where night-watchmen went about the streets chanting the hours, all the people were neighbors. There were no very rich and few very poor. How Jacob hated the one ramshackle old house by the dry moat which had surrounded the great castle of the mighty Valdemar barons in feudal days! This place seemed given over to dirt, rats, disease, and dirty, rat-like children. Jacob’s friends called it Rag Hall, and said it was a shame that such an ugly, ill-smelling pile should spoil the neighborhood of Castle Hill, where they loved to play among the tall grass and swaying reeds of the moat.

Rag Hall came to fill a large place in Jacob’s thoughts. It was the grim shadow of his bright young world. Surely the world as God had made it was a place of open sky, fresh life-giving breezes, and rolling meadows of dewy, fragrant greenness. How did it happen that people could get so far away from all that made life sweet and wholesome? How had they lost their birthright?

As Jacob looked at the gray, dirty children of Rag Hall it seemed to him that they had never had a chance to be anything better. “What should I have been if I had always lived in such a place?” he said to himself.

One Christmas, Jacob’s father gave him a mark,—a silver coin like our quarter,—which was more money than the boy had ever had

before. Now it seemed to him that he might be able to do something to help make things better in Rag Hall. He ran to the tenement—to the room of the most miserable family who lived there.

“Here,” he said to a man who took the money as if he were stunned, “I’ll divide my Christmas mark with you, if you’ll just try to clean things up a bit, especially the children, and give them a chance to live like folks.”

The twelve-year-old boy little thought that the great adventure of his life really began that day at Rag Hall. But years after when he went about among the tenements of New York, trying to make things better for the children of Mulberry Bend and Cherry Street, he remembered where the long journey had begun.

It was no wonder that Christmas stirred the heart of this young viking, and made him long for real deeds. Christmas in Ribe was a time of joy and good-will to all. A lighted candle was put in the window of every farm-house to cheer the wayfarer with the message that nobody is a stranger at Christmas. Even the troublesome sparrows were not forgotten. A sheaf of rye was set up in the snow to make them the Christmas-tree they would like best. The merry Christmas elf, the “Jule-nissen,” who lived in the attic, had a special bowl of rice and milk put out for him. Years afterward, when this Danish lad was talking to a crowd of New York boys and girls, he said, with a twinkle in his eyes:

“I know if no one else ever really saw the Nissen that our black cat had made his acquaintance. She looked very wise and purred most knowingly next morning.”

If Christmas brought the happiest times, the northwest storms in autumn brought the most thrilling experiences of Jacob’s boyhood. Then, above the moaning of the wind, the muttered anger of the waves, and the crash of falling tiles, came the weird singing of the big bell in the tower of the Domkirke—the cathedral, you know.

After such a night the morning would dawn on a strange world where storm-lashed waves covered the meadows and streets for miles about, and on the causeway, high above the flood-level, cattle, sheep, rabbits, grouse, and other frightened creatures of the fields huddled together in pitiful groups.

One night, when the flood had risen before the mail-coach came in and the men of the town feared for the lives of the passengers, Jacob went out with the rescue-party to the road where the coach must pass. Scarcely able to stand against the wind, he struggled along on the causeway where, in pitchy blackness, with water to his waist and pelting spray lashing his face like the sting of a whip, he groped along, helping to lead the frightened horses to the lights of the town a hundred yards away. It was hard that night to get warmed through; but the boy’s heart glowed, for had not the brusk old Amtmand, the chief official of the country, seized him by the arm and said, while rapping him smartly on the shoulders with his cane, as if, in other days, he would have knighted him, “Strong boy, be a man yet!”

Jacob’s father, who was master of the town school, was keenly disappointed when this alert, promising son declared his wish to give up the ways of book-learning and master the carpenter’s trade. The boy felt that building houses for people to live in would be far better than juggling with words and all the unreal problems with which school and school-books seemed to deal. Thinking that it would be useless to try to force his son into a life distasteful to him, the father swallowed his disappointment and sent him to serve his apprenticeship with a great builder in Copenhagen. The boy should, he determined, have the best start in his chosen calling that it was in his power to give him.

Soon after his arrival in the capital, Jacob went to meet his student brother at the palace of Charlottenborg, where an art exhibition was being held. Seeing that he was a stranger and ill at ease, a tall, handsome gentleman paused on his way up the grand staircase and offered to act as guide. As they went on together, the gentleman asked the boy about himself and listened with ready sympathy to his eager story of his life in the old town, and what he hoped to do in the new life of the city. When they parted Jacob said heartily:

“People are just the same friendly neighbors in Copenhagen that they are in little Ribe—jolly good Danes everywhere, just like you, sir!”

The stranger smiled and patted him on the shoulder in a way more friendly still. Just at that moment they came to a door where a red-liveried lackey stood at attention. He bowed low as they entered and Jacob, bowing back, turned to his new friend with a delighted smile:

“There is another example of what I mean, sir,” he said. “Would you believe it, now, that I have never seen that man before?”

The gentleman laughed, and, pointing to a door, told Jacob he would find his brother there. While the boy happily recounted his adventures, particularly the story of his kindly guide, the handsome gentleman passed through the room and nodded to him with his twinkling smile.

“There is my jolly gentleman,” said Jacob, as he nodded back.

His brother jumped to his feet and bowed low.

“Good gracious!” he said, when the stranger had passed out. “You don’t mean to say he was your guide? Why, boy, that was the King!”

So Jacob learned that in Denmark even a king, whom he had always thought of as wearing a jeweled crown and a trailing robe of velvet and ermine held by dainty silken pages, could go about in a plain blue overcoat like any other man, and be just as simple and neighborly.

In Copenhagen the king of his fairy-book world was a neighbor, too. Hans Christian Andersen was a familiar figure on the streets at that time. Jacob and his companions often met him walking under the lindens along the old earthen walls that surrounded the city.

“Isn’t he an ugly duck, though!” said Jacob one evening, as the awkward old man, with his long, ungainly neck and limbs and enormous hands and feet, came in sight. Then the merry young fellows strung themselves along in Indian file, each in turn bowing low as he passed, and saying with mock reverence, “Good evening, Herr Professor!”

But when the gentle old man, with the child’s heart, seized their hands in his great grasp and thanked them delightedly, they slunk by shamefacedly, and, while they chuckled a little, avoided meeting each other’s eyes. For in their hearts they loved the old man whose stories had charmed their childhood, and they knew that the spirit within the lank, awkward body was altogether lovely.

All the time that Jacob was working with hammer and saw, he was, like that first Jacob of whom we read, serving for his Rachel. From the time he was a clumsy lad of twelve he knew that his playmate Elizabeth, with the golden curls and the fair, gentle looks, was the princess of his own fairy-tale. Like all good fairy-tales, it simply had to turn out happily.

When his apprenticeship was over and he had learned all about building houses for people to live in, he hurried at once to Ribe to build his own house. It seemed, however, that nobody realized that he was the hero who was to marry the princess. Why, Elizabeth’s father owned the one factory in town, and they lived in a big house, which some people called a “castle.” Small chance that he would let his pretty daughter marry a carpenter!

Since working faithfully for long, busy years had not brought him to his goal, Jacob threw aside his tools and decided to seek his fortune in a new country. In America, surely, a true man might come into his own. The days of high adventure were not dead. He would win fame and fortune, and then return in triumph to the old town—and to Elizabeth.

It was a beautiful spring morning—surely a prophecy of fair beginnings—when this young viking sailed into New York Harbor. The dauntless Northmen, who pushed across the seas and discovered America, could not have thrilled more at the sight of their Vineland than did this Dane of our own day when he saw the sky-line of the great city. This must indeed be a new world of opportunity for strong men.

It took only a day of wandering about the crowded streets, however, to convince this seeker that a golden chance is as hard to find in the New York of to-day as gold was in those disillusioning days of the early explorers. The golden chance, it seemed, was to be won, if at all, as is the precious metal—only after intelligent prospecting and patient digging.

How utterly alone he felt in that crowd of hurrying strangers! Very different it all was from his cozy little country where every one was a neighbor, even the king himself.

Out of sheer loneliness and the desire to belong to somebody he threw in his lot with a gang of men who were being gathered together to work in a mining-camp on the Allegheny River. Perhaps the West was his Promised Land, and Pennsylvania would be a start on the way.

The young carpenter was set to work building houses for the workers in the mines. He could not content himself, however, in this shut-in country. To one used to the vastness of a level land stretching as far as eye could see, it seemed as if the hills and forests hedged him in on every side—as if he could not breathe. To ease the restlessness of his homesick spirit, he determined to try his fortune at coal-mining. One day was enough of that. In his inexperience he failed to brace the roof properly, and a great piece of rock came down on him, knocking the lamp from his cap and leaving him stunned and in utter darkness. When at last he succeeded in groping his way out, it was as if he had come back from the dead. The daylight had never before seemed so precious. Nothing could have induced him to try coal-mining again.

At this time, 1870, news came of the war between Germany and France. It was expected, moreover, that Denmark would come to the assistance of the French, since only a few years before, in 1864, Germany had seized some of the choicest territory of the little North Sea kingdom—Schleswig-Holstein, the section through which the important Kiel Canal has been built. Every Dane longed to avenge the wrong. Jacob Riis at once left his tools and his work. He would win glory as a soldier.

He reached New York with but a single cent in his pocket, only to find that no one was fitting out volunteer companies to send to France. Here he was longing to offer his life for the cause, and it was treated like a worthless trifle. Clothes and every cherished possession that his little trunk contained were soon pawned to pay for food and a roof over his head.

There followed months when the young man wandered about the great city, homeless, hungry, vainly seeking employment. Too proud to beg, he yet accepted night after night a plate of meat and rolls which a French cook in a large restaurant handed him from a basement window. It seemed as if that was a part of the debt France owed her would-be soldier.

He was part of a weary army of discouraged men hunting for work. He knew what it meant to sleep on park benches, in doorways, in empty wagons, and even on the flat stone slabs of a graveyard. There were, in New York, friends of his family who might have helped him, but he was too proud to make himself known in his present sorry plight. He even destroyed the letters to them, lest in a moment of weakness he might be tempted to appeal to their charity.

This time of hardship, however, was destined to bear fruit. Jacob Riis came to know the shadows of the great city—all the miserable alleys and narrow courts of the East Side slums. Then and there, weak and starving though he was, the boy who had given his Christmas money to help Rag Hall vowed that he would some day work to remove those plague-spots from the city’s life. “How true it is,” he said, “that one half of the world doesn’t know how the other half lives! If they only knew, things would be different.”

At last the chance for which he had been longing came. Hearing that a new reporter was wanted by the News Association, he applied for the position. After looking the haggard applicant over for a moment doubtfully, the editor was moved to give him a trial. The starving man was sent to report a political banquet. When he turned in his “copy” at the office the editor said briefly:

“You will do. Take that desk and report at ten every morning, sharp.”

So began his life as a reporter.

Perhaps you know something of his success as a newspaper man. He knew how to gather news; and he knew how to find the words that make bare facts live. The days and nights of privation had been rich in experience. He was truly “a part of all that he had met.” Something of his intimate acquaintance with all sorts and conditions of existence, something of his warm, understanding sympathy for every variety of human joy and sorrow, crept into his work. Besides, the young man had boundless enthusiasm and tireless industry.

“That chap just seems to eat work,” said his fellow-reporters.

One day a very special letter came from Denmark, which told him that his gentle Elizabeth was quite convinced that he was indeed the prince of her life story. So, as it turned out, he didn’t have to make a fortune before he was able to bring her to share his home in New York. With her it seemed that he brought the best of the old life into the new—

The only homesick times that he knew now were the days when his work as a reporter took him to the streets of the miserable tenements. All his soul cried out against these places where the poor, the weak, and the wicked, the old, the sick, and helpless babies were all herded together in damp, dingy rooms where the purifying sunlight never entered. During his years of wandering in search of work he had gained an intimate knowledge of such conditions. He knew what poverty meant and how it felt. Afterward, when he saw this hideous squalor, he shared it. These people were his neighbors.

“Over against the tenements of our cities,” he said, “ever rise in my mind the fields, the woods, God’s open sky, as accusers and witnesses that his temple is being defiled and man dwarfed in body and soul.”

He knew that the one way to remove such evils and to force people to put up decent houses for the poor was to bring the facts out in the open. When he described what he had seen, the words seemed to mean little to many of the people that he wanted to reach. Then he hit upon the plan of taking pictures. These pictures served to illustrate some very direct talks he gave in the churches. Later, many of them made an important part of his book, “How the Other Half Lives.”

“These people are your neighbors,” said Jacob Riis. “It is the business of the fortunate half of those who live in our great cities to find out how the other half lives. No one can live to himself or die to himself—

Through his persistent campaigning, one of the very worst parts of New York, known as Mulberry Bend, a veritable network of alleys which gave hiding to misery and crime untold, was bought by the city, the buildings torn down, and the spot converted into a public park.

Several years later, when Roosevelt was President, he asked Mr. Riis to investigate the conditions of streets and alleys in Washington. It developed that within three squares of the Capitol there was a system of alleys honeycombing a single block where a thousand people were crowded together under conditions that made a hotbed of misery, crime, and disease. The good citizens of the National Capital, who had read with horror about the evils of New York and Chicago, were rudely shaken out of their self-complacency. That square is now one of Washington’s parks.

Jacob Riis early learned the power of facts. His training as a reporter taught him that. He was also willing to work early and late, when the need arose, to gather them. At one time when there was a cholera scare in New York, he happened to look over the Health Department analysis of the water from the Croton River, and noticed that it was said to contain “a trace of nitrites.”

“What does that mean?” he asked of the chemist.

The reply was more learned than enlightening. The reporter was not satisfied. He carried his inquiry farther and discovered that “nitrites” meant that the water had been contaminated by sewage from towns above New York. Riis then took his camera and explored not only the Croton River to its source, but also every stream that emptied into it, taking pictures that proved in the most convincing way the dangers of the city. As a result, money was appropriated to buy a strip of land along the streams, wide enough to protect the people’s water-supply.

Another great work that Jacob Riis was enabled to carry through had its beginnings in that stormy chapter of his life when he found himself a vagrant among vagrants. He learned at first hand what the police lodging-houses for the homeless were like. At that time this charity was left in the hands of the police, who had neither the ability nor the desire to handle these cases wisely and humanely and to meet the problems of helping people to help themselves. Jacob Riis worked shoulder to shoulder with Theodore Roosevelt, who was then police commissioner of New York, to make the organized charity of the city an intelligent agency for relieving suffering and putting on their feet again those who were, for some reason, “down and out.” Many were brought back to wholesome living through the realization that they had “neighbors” who cared.

In the same way he worked for parks and playgrounds for the children. He saw that the city spoils much good human material.

“We talk a great deal about city toughs,” he says in his autobiography. “In nine cases out of ten they are lads of normal impulses whose possibilities have all been smothered by the slum. With better opportunities they might have been heroes.”

Many honors came to Jacob Riis. He was known as a “boss reporter”; his books gave him a nation-wide fame; the King of Denmark sent him the Crusaders’ Cross, the greatest honor his native land could bestow; President Roosevelt called him the “most useful American” of his day. But I think what meant more to him than any or all of these things was the real affection of his many “neighbors,” especially the children.

Many times he gathered together boys and girls from the streets to enjoy a day with him in the country.

“This will help until we can give them trees and grass in their slum,” he would say, “and then there will be no slum.” His eyes grew very tender as he added, “No, there will be no slum; it will be a true City Beautiful—and the fairest blossoms there will be the children.”

Riis called the story of his life, “The Making of an American.” While his life was in the making he helped to make many others. He was in truth a maker of Americans.

Do you not think that he lived a life as truly adventurous as the vikings of old—this viking of our own day? They lived for deeds of daring and plunder; he lived for deeds every whit as brave—and for service.