Excerpt from The American Legion Monthly, Vol. 5: November, 1928 I had seen photographs and etch ings of skyscrapers before I came to America. I had always had Ameri can friends, and they were willing to describe their country. But I was determined to enter the country by New York in order to see the wonderful harbor and sea-front of which I had heard so much. The last I saw of Eng land were the white cliffs of the Isle of Wight on a September day, when yachts revolved about the ship like great white moths. Then no more land until the entry into New York Harbor at about six o'clock in the evening. I missed the Statue of Liberty on that occasion, although I have seen it since. I was busy below, doing the last bits of frantic packing. New York, when at last I came on deck, loomed before me through a deep blue haze like an enchanted city. The dim forms of the skyscrapers shot grace fully up into the sky, starred all the way up by their innumerable lighted windows. The sight gave me that odd sensation that all moving experiences give, of sudden rediscovered familiarity. I felt that I had known it all my life, but that it had been hidden deep in my subconscious mind. I felt then that America was going to come up to my highest expectations. In my childhood, I had not at first realized that my American friends belonged to another country and another flag. They spoke the same language, and I supposed, with a child's simplicity, that they sprang from the same background as myself and inherited the same traditions. Only when these friends, small boys and girls, disappeared for long periods did I learn that they had gone back to their own country, a great and strange and magnificent place called America, such a long way off that they could only go there for a long time or not at all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.