XVI WORK CASTLES, WILKES-BARRE
From the end of the new bridge which has replaced the wonderful old wooden ones that got one somehow across the Susquehanna and other American rivers, wandering just at sunset up the beautiful bank of the beautiful river, I found this splendid subject. All, many would say, that was wanted were some knights bringing home fair ladies; all, others would say, was the poor workman, trudging, filled with Millet sentiment, whiskey, or his wrongs, to the filthy hole he is allowed to live in and call his—for the time—home; for these mining towns, the fault of their inhabitants, are pigsties—pigsties that no government in any country in the world but this would permit. It is only in America that immigrants live like hogs—as they like—no government in Europe would permit it. I have seen both hemispheres and know most social reformers have not—and would not know if they had. We are trying to clean up the world before we can clean our back yards. But I only looked at the coal breaker as making, perfecting, carrying out a composition in a glorious landscape, and for that reason I sat down and drew it.