AGAINST THE CURRENT
EDWARD A. STEINER
Against the Current
Simple Chapters from a Complex Life.
12mo, cloth, net $1.25
The Immigrant Tide—
Its Ebb and Flow
Illustrated, 8vo, cloth, net $1.50
On the Trail of the Immigrant
4th Edition. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, net $1.50
“Deals with the character, temperament,
racial traits, aspirations and capabilities of
the immigrant.”—Outlook.
The Mediator
A Tale of the Old World and the New.
Illustrated, 12mo, cloth $1.50
“A graphic story, splendidly told.”—Robert
Watchorn, Commissioner of Immigration.
Tolstoy, the Man and His Message
A Biographical Interpretation
Revised and enlarged. Illustrated, 12mo,
cloth, net $1.50
“The truest, fairest and most sane study
that has yet been made.”
—Philadelphia Record.
Against the Current
Simple Chapters
from
A Complex Life
By
EDWARD A. STEINER
Author of “On the Trail of the Immigrant,”
Etc., etc.
New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1910, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street
To
President John Hanson Thomas Main,
the embodiment of the ideals of
Grinnell College
who,
although of different race and lineage
is to me a friend and brother;
I dedicate this book
on the tenth anniversary of our first meeting
Foreword
BEFORE I could speak one language, I cried in three, and the first wordsI uttered were in a tongue so foreign to my later life, that I haveforgotten all but a few phrases which cling to me in spite of my neglectof them.
I played with the children of three distinct races and loved those bestwho hated my people most.
My soul awakened in the tumult of three alien faiths and grew intomaturity in the belief furthest from that of my fathers. My mindstruggled first with the mature if stagnant wisdom of Hebrew teachers,who treated children as if they were sages and sages as if they werechildren; but it escaped from that bondage into the untrammelled wisdomof the Greeks, their successors, then into that of the Germans, andlater became reasonably disciplined unde