There are many debts that I owe Joe Murray, and some for which he was only unconsciously responsible.  I do not think that a man is fit to do good work in our American democracy unless he is able to have a genuine fellow-feeling for, understanding of, and sympathy with his fellow-Americans, whatever their creed or their birthplace, the section in which they live, or the work which they do, provided they possess the only kind of Americanism that really counts, the Americanism of the spirit.  It was no small help to me, in the effort to make myself a good citizen and good American, that the political associate with whom I was on closest and most intimate terms during my early years was a man born in Ireland, by creed a Catholic, with Joe Murray’s upbringing; just as it helped me greatly at a later period to work for certain vitally necessary public needs with Arthur von Briesen, in whom the spirit of the “Acht-und-Vierziger” idealists was embodied; just as my whole life was influenced by my long association with Jacob Riis, whom I am tempted to call the best American I ever knew, although he was already a young man when he came hither from Denmark.

I was elected to the Legislature in the fall of 1881, and found myself the youngest man in that body.  I was reelected the two following years.  Like all young men and inexperienced members, I had considerable difficulty in teaching myself to speak.  I profited much by the advice of a hard-headed old countryman—­who was unconsciously paraphrasing the Duke of Wellington, who was himself doubtless paraphrasing somebody else.  The advice ran:  “Don’t speak until you are sure you have something to say, and know just what it is; then say it, and sit down.”

My first days in the Legislature were much like those of a boy in a strange school.  My fellow-legislators and I eyed one another with mutual distrust.  Each of us chose his seat, each began by following the lead of some veteran in the first routine matters, and then, in a week or two, we began to drift into groups according to our several affinities.  The Legislature was Democratic.  I was a Republican from the “silk stocking” district, the wealthiest district in New York, and I was put, as one of the minority members, on the Committee of Cities.  It was a coveted position.  I did not make any effort to get on, and, as far as I know, was put there merely because it was felt to be in accordance with the fitness of things.

A very short experience showed me that, as the Legislature was then constituted, the so-called party contests had no interest whatever for me.  There was no real party division on most of the things that were of concern in State politics, both Republicans and Democrats being for and against them.  My friendships were made, not with regard to party lines, but because I found, and my friends found, that we had the same convictions on questions of principle and questions of policy.  The only difference was that there was a larger proportion of these men among the Republicans than among the Democrats, and that it was easier for me at the outset to scrape acquaintance, among the men who felt as I did, with the Republicans.  They were for the most part from the country districts.