what is the central idea of this passage?
For over three centuries a steady stream of men, women and children followed the beacon of liberty which this light symbolizes. They brought to us strength and moral fibre developed in a civilization centuries old but fired anew by the dream of a better life in America. They brought to one new country the cultures of a hundred old ones.
It has not been sufficiently emphasized in the teaching of our history that the overwhelming majority of those who came from the Nations of the Old World to our American shores were not the laggards, not the timorous, not the failures. They were men and women who had the supreme courage to strike out for themselves, to abandon language and relatives, to start at the bottom without influence, without money and without knowledge of life in a very young civilization. We can say for all America what the Californians say of the Forty-Niners: "The cowards never started and the weak died by the way."
Perhaps Providence did prepare this American continent to be a place of the second chance. Certainly, millions of men and women have made it that. They adopted this homeland because in this land they found a home in which the things they most desired could be theirs—freedom of opportunity, freedom of thought, freedom to worship God. Here they found life because here there was freedom to live.
It is the memory of all these eager seeking millions that makes this one of America's places of great romance. Looking down this great harbor I like to think of the countless numbers of inbound vessels that have made this port. I like to think of the men and women who, with the break of dawn off Sandy Hook, have strained their eyes to the west for a first glimpse of the New World.
They came to us—most of them—in steerage. But they, in their humble quarters, saw things in these strange horizons which were denied to the eyes of those few who traveled in greater luxury.
They came to us speaking many tongues—but a single language, the universal language of human aspiration.
How well their hopes were justified is proved by the record of what they achieved. They not only found freedom in the New World, but by their effort and devotion they made the New World's freedom safer, richer, more far-reaching, more capable of growth.
3 answers
"Our home was in Naples in the South of Italy. It is so beautiful there! And the sun shines all day long and every day, and we often sing our dear song, "La bella Napoli." We loved our dear sunny Italy so much! But we were very poor, and father heard there is good times in America and plenty money; so one day he say good-by to us all and come over here. He not find plenty money, and sometimes he very poor, and it was long to wait, but by and by he find a good work and being to save money to bring us over.
"Every week my mother gotta letter, and every time it tell how much money my father saved. Father can't write himself, but he know a boy that can; and mother, she get a lady that she work for to read it to her. We not have so many schools in Italy, and when the father and mother were little they not have much chance; but my Italy now is like other countries and make more schools, and many children can go, but not all. I learn a little, and the American lady that mother wash for, she teacha me the English. Father, he write that, when we come to America, we all shall go to the school; so we all want to make hurry to come to this land.
"At last, in a letter came money to buy the ticket for all of us, mother and grandmother and all the children. Mother think it much work to get us all ready, but we all helped; and, after all, there was not much to get ready, for we not own many things; and so at last we all were packed up, and every one had something to carry except baby. Even Theresa carried the birdcage, though she is only two.
what is the central idea of this passage?
1 answer