"Yet you succeeded," it will be argued.
That may be; but you, on the other hand, must admit that I did not
succeed by reason of these shortcomings: it was in spite of them, by
overcoming them--a result that all might not achieve.
CHAPTER XXII
WHAT I OWE TO AMERICA
Whatever shortcomings I may have found during my fifty-year period of
Americanization; however America may have failed to help my transition
from a foreigner into an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift
that any nation can offer, and that is opportunity.
As the world stands to-day, no nation offers opportunity in the degree
that America does to the foreign-born. Russia may, in the future, as I
like to believe she will, prove a second United States of America in
this respect. She has the same limitless area; her people the same
potentialities. But, as things are to-day, the United States offers,
as does no other nation, a limitless opportunity: here a man can go as
far as his abilities will carry him. It may be that the foreign-born,
as in my own case, must hold on to some of the ideals and ideas of the
land of his birth; it may be that he must develop and mould his
character by overcoming the habits resulting from national
shortcomings.
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